The Ego/Death K

Wayne 2010 The Death K

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The Death K[need 2nr blox impacts to Heisman externals]

Table of Contents

The Death K 1

***The Shell*** 4

Ego 1NC 5

***Extinction Good*** 13

Dolan – Nuclear Winter Good 14

Viviocentrism 2NC 17

Freedom Module 19

Precautionary Principle 20

Factory Farms Module 22

Ego 2NC 24

***PP Extensiion*** 26

Frontline 27

A2: Extinction Causes More Short Term Suffering 30

A2: VtL 32

A2: Future Generations 33

A2: Science gives meaning to life 35

AT Rawls 36

***Surrender Key*** 38

Transcendence 39

The Will 40

A2: Compassion43

A2: Optimism 45

A2: Pessimism Bad 47

xx/Suicide Note/xx Life is a choice… and death is a decision


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***Death Doesn’t Exist*** 49

Immortality 50

Afterlife 53

A2: We’re All Atoms 55

A2: Extinction Different 56

A/T: Empathy/Ethics 57

***Consciousness*** 59

Life is Consciousness 60

Consciousness Creates Reality 62

Collective Consciousness 63

***Quals/Science Debate*** 66

Epistemology D/A 67

“Logic” Framework 68

Epistemology Module 70

***Specific Arg Blocks*** 73

A2: Pyzczynski 74

A2: Nietzsche (Suffering and Struggle Good) 76

A2: Transhumanism 81

***Digger Death*** 86

Ontology Frontline 87

Ontology 1st 92

***The Shell***



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1NCs



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Long Ego 1NC

We're On the Road to Nowhere—the attempt to preserve life is really nothing but an imperialist quest staged by our own desire to reproduce more and more of ourselves, this goal of survival only glorifies continual reproduction of the ego and more bodies—walking meat bag vessels of the ego.Deleuze and Guattari ’72 (Gilles and Felix, Anti-Oedipus, 1972, p. 107-109)

Coextensiveness is another matter entirely, the coextension of man and nature; a circular movement by which the unconscious, always remaining subject produces and reproduces itself. The unconscious does not follow the paths of a generation progressing (or regressing) from one body to another: your father, your father's father, and so on The organized body is the object of reproduction by generation; it is not its subject. The sole subject of reproduction is the unconscious itself which holds to the circular form of production. Sexuality is not a means in the service of generation; rather, the generation of bodies is in the service of sexuality as an autoproduction of the unconscious . Sexuality does not represent a premium for the ego, in exchange for its subordination to the process of generation; on the contrary, generation is the ego's solace, its prolongation , the passage from one body to another through which the unconscious does no more than reproduce itself in itself. Indeed, in this sense we must say the unconscious has always been an orphan-that is, it has engendered itself in the identity of nature and man, of the world and man. The question of the father, the question of God, is what has become impossible, a matter of indifference, so true is It that to affirm or deny such a being amounts to the same thing, or to live it or kill it: one and the same misconception (contresens) concerning the nature of the unconscious. But psychoanalysts are bent on producing man abstractly, that is to say ideologically, for culture. It is Oedipus who produces man in this fashion, and who gives a structure to the false movement of infinite progression and regression: your father, and your father's father, a snowball gathering speed as it moves from Oedipus all the way to the father of the primal horde, to God and the Paleolithic age. It is Oedipus who makes us man, for better or for worse, say those who would make fools of us all. The tone may vary, but the message remains basically the same: you will not escape Oedipus, your sole choice is between the "neurotic outlet" and the "non-neurotic outlet." But psychoanalysts are bent on producing man abstractly, that is to say ideologically, for culture. The tone may be that of the scandalized psychoanalyst, the psychoanalyst-as-cop: those who do not bow to the imperialism of Oedipus are dangerous deviants, leftists who ought to be handed over to social and police repression; they talk too much and are lacking in anality (Dr. Gerard Mendel, Doctors Stephane). What kind of disquieting play on words is it that can make the analyst a promoter of anality? Or there is the psychoanalyst-as-priest, the pious psychoanalyst who is forever chanting the incurable insufficiency of being: don't you see that Oedipus saves us from Oedipus, it is our agony but also our ecstasy, depending on whether we live it neurotically or live its structure; it is the mother of the holy faith (1. M. Pohier). Or the technopsychoanalyst, the reform psychoanalyst obsessed with the triangle, who wraps the splendid gifts of civilization in Oedipus-identity, manic-depression, and liberty in an infinite progression: "Through Oedipus the individual learns to live the triangular situation, the token of his identity, and at the same time he discovers sometimes in a depressive mode, sometimes in a mode of exaltation his fundamental alienation, his irremediable solitude, the price of his liberty. The basic structure of the Oedipal apparatus must not only be generalized in time so as to account for all the triangular experiences of the child and his parents, it must be generalized in space to include those triangular relations other than the parent-child relations."49



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Our lives exist perpetually in the middle – subjects in the middle of becoming objects – people in the middle living – people in the middle of becoming corpses. Life is an a-subjective current of folded consciousness, a stream of life, and we slip on and on through the middle of it – never seeing the forest for the trees. The truth is that the river runs through us too – united in pure immanence. However, the restrictive identity of “self” survival imprisons us in the ego and the body, preventing any lines of flight or becoming.

Mark ’98 (John, Gilles Deleuze: Vitalism and Multiplicity, p. 29-33)

It's organisms that die, not life. Any work of art points a way through for life, finds a way through the cracks. Everything I've written is vitalistic, at least I hope it is, and amounts to a theory of signs and events. (N. 143) In the final piece of work published before his death, a short article entitled 'Immanence: a life .…’ Deleuze presents a concise statement of his philosophical concerns. Ahhough he does not use the word 'vitalism', the ideas presented here arc undoubtedly vitalist in inspiration. The article begins by defming a transcendental field. That is to say the field which constitutes the basis of his philsophy: transcendental empiricism. This field is defined as '[…] a pure a-subjective current of consciousness, an impersonal prereflexive consciousness, a qualitative duration of consciousness without self’ .24 Obviously, this 'pure' current of consciousness has links with the notions of impersonal, indefinite discourse dealt with above. Pure immanence exists in opposition to the world represented and mediated through the framework of the subject and the object. The notion of immanence goes to the heart of Deleuze's transcendental empiricism which embraces both vitalism and multiplicity: Pure immanence is A LIFE, and nothing else. It is not immanence to life, but the immanence which is in nothing is itself a life. A life is the immanence of immanence, absolute immanence; it is sheer power, utter beatitude. Insofar as he overcomes the aporias of the subjecc and the object Fichte, in his later philosophy, presents the transcendental field as a life which does not depend on a Being and is not subjected to an Act; an absolute immediate consciousness whose very activity no lonaer refers back to a being but ceaselessly posits itself in a life.25 To illustrate what he means by this use of the definite anicle, a life, Deleuze describes a scene in Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, in which 'a universally scorned rogue' is brought back to life. Those working to bring him out of his coma respond not to the individual, but to a pre-individual power of life which is 'impersonal but singular nevertheless'. Deleuze also perceives the pre-individual nature of life in young children; Very young children, for example, all resemble each other and have barely any individuality; but they have singularities, a smile, a gesture, a grimace -events which arc not subjective characteristics. They are traversed by an immanent life that is pure power and even beatitude through the sufferings and weaknesses.26 Deleuze's problematising approach to the question oflife and work derives in part from his vitalist perspective. The act of writing itself is an attempt to make of life something more than personal, '[ ... ] to free life from what imprisons it' (N, 143). One of the aims of philosophy and art is t o render visible the forces that have captured life. Artists and philosophers may be frail individuals, but they are literally 'vital' penonalities by virtue of the excess of life that they have seen, experienced or thought about: 'There's a profound link between signs, events, life and vitalism: the power of non-organic life that can be found in a line that's drawn, a line of writing. a line of music. It's organisms that die, not life' (N, 143). The writer comes into contact with things that threaten to overwhelm the individual; […] he possesses irrnistible and delicate health that stems from what he has seen and heard of things too big for him, too strong for him, suffocating things whose passage exhausts him while nonetheless giving him the becomings



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that dominant and substantial health would render impossible. The writer returns from what he has seen and heard with red eyes and pierced eardrums. 27 Deleuze's vitalism is in this way linked to his 'anti-humanism'. A sign is created when thought encounters 'non-organic life'. The 'outside' 85 Deleuze sometimes calls it. Signs are also an expression of t he flux and indeterminacy of life . The sign is an expression of the pre-individual, of the flux of life where the constraints of identity have yet to be applied . Philip Goodchild has argued that Deleuze's project represents a 'practical vitalism', which enables thought to come into contact with the power of life.28 The theme of vitalism in Deleuzc's work has also been taken up in some detail recently by Mireille Buydens in Sahara: l'esthetique de Gilles Deleuze (1990).29 Buydens argues that Deleuze's 'transcendental' field is constituted by a 'swarm' of pre-individual singularities. This fluid structure is that of the rhizome or the multiplicity. Vitalism is a way of connecting with, of being in the presence of, this pre-individual world of flux and becoming. Deleuze's vitalism is expressed in his preference for verbs, particularly in the infinitive form, over nouns: 'infinitives express becomings or events that uanscend mood and tense' (N, 34). For Buydens, the theme of vitalism comes first and foremost from Bergson. She draws attention in particular to Bergson's Creative Evolution (l911), where the 'elan vital' is described as a form of becoming, which eludes analysis and the material form in which it can be perceived . Buydens also points to Nietzsche and Spinoza as thinkers who influence Deleuze in his development of vitalism. Of course, the theme of vitalism requires a discussion of Deleuze's reading of Bergson, and this will be dealt with in the following chapter. However, it is important to understand that other thinkers, such as Nietzsche and Spinoza, help Deleuze to develop the question of vitalism. For example, Perra Perry claims that Deleuze's innovative reading of Nietzsche in the 1960’s enabled Deleuze, in his subsequent work, to reactivate some of the debates generated by turn-of-the-cenrury vitalism in France.) Also, in the introductory chapter,'The Life of Spinozs', in Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (Spinoza: Philosophie pratique 1981) Deleuze presents a portrait of a frail individual whose very individuality is the product of powerful lines of force. Spinoza's life was on one level startlingly ascetic, undermined as it was by illness and characterised by a nomadic, propertyless existence. However, Spinoza was able to embrace an affirmative, joyous conception of life. He pre-empts Nietzsche's distaste for resentment and bad conscience, the tendency to turn against life and to fight for one's own enslavement. It is this later tendency that marks Spinoza out as pre-empting the 'modern' question of fascism. In his Theological Treatise Spinoza is preoccupied with the question of why people are apparently so willing to be separated from the positive force of life. Why do they submit so willingly to the forces that imprison life? Why are the people so deeply irrational? Why are they proud of their own enslavement? Why do they fight 'for' their bondage as if it were their freedom? Why is it so difficu.lt not to win but to bear freedom? Why does a religion that invokes love and joy inspire war, intolerance, hatred, malevolence, and remorse? (S:PP, 10) Ultimately, as Todd May claims, this is the question which makes all of Deleuze's work political. 32 Theories of ideology and false consciousness only recognise the injustices and oppressions we suffer against our will or because we are somehow duped into believing that they are good for us. Deleuze, however, poses a question which is both much more direct and more subtle: why do we desire what oppresses us? This is one of the aspects of Anti-Oedipus that Foucault so admires, when he talks of Deleuze and Guanari's attempt to tackle the problem of fascism; '[ ... ] the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us' (AD, xiii). Becoming: Starting in the Middle One never commences; one never has a tabula rasa; one slips in, enters in the middle; one takes up or lays down rhythms. (S;PP, 123) It is never the beginning or the end which are interesting; the beginning and end are points. What is interesting is the middle. (D, 39) The 'indefinite life' that Deleuze talks of in his very last article 'Immanence: a life ... ' takes place 'in the middle' ; 'This indefinite life does not have moments, however close they might be, but only meantimes [des entremps], between-moments.''' Starting in the middle, becoming, constitutes a guiding principle in Deleuze's work: 'being is becoming'. As Bergson points out, the intellect tends to spatialise, to immobilise the flux of life which is being . In this way, perception of being is reduced and impoverished. For this reason, Bergson promotes the development of a philosophical intuition. This is a



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problematising method which attempts to come to terms with the irreducible flux of being. In developing this Bergsonian perspective Deleuze goes some way to creating an image of thought which is subtle enough to seize the flow of life.l4 This is also a question of the indirect, impersonal 'style' that Deleuze develops; 'Your writing has to be liquid or gaseous simply because normal perception and opinion are solid, geomeuic' (N, 133). Deleuze also admits that the middle is the most comfortable place for him to be. It corresponds to his 'habit' of thinking of things in terms of lines rather than points (N, 161). For Deleuze, the 'English' have a particular tendency to begin in the middle, whereas the 'French' are obsessed with tools, beginnings and foundations: The English zero is always in the middle. Bottlenecks are always in the middle. Being in the middle of a line is the most uncomfonable position. One begins again through the middle. The French think in tenns of trees too much: the tree of knowledge, points of aborescence, the alpha and omega, the roots and the pinnacle. (0, 39) In the later part of his career Deleuze continued to develop the question of that which is in the middle with his work on Leibniz and the Baroque concept of the fold. Leibniz's 'monadic' conception of matter undermines distinctions between organic and inorganic matter, interior and exterior, and bodies and souls. If matter is continuous and endlessly folded, it must express a concept of movement which is always in the middle : Everything moves as if the pleats of matter possessed no reason in themselves. It is because the Fold is always between two folds, and because the between-two-folds seems to move about everywhere: Is it between inorganic bodies and organisms, between organisms and animal souls, between animal souls and reasonable souls, between bodies and souls in general? (LB, 13) The conjunction 'and' helps us to think in terms of the middle, to escape the way in which thought is conventionally modelled on the verb 'to be'. 'And' is a tool for producing a sort of 'stammering' in thought and language; it is the possibility of diversity and the destruction of identity. Multiplicity is not the sum of its terms, but is contained in the 'and'; AND is neither one thing nor the other, it's always in between, between two things; it's the borderline, there's always a border, a line of flight or flow, only we don't see it, because it's the least perceptible of things. And yet it's along this line of flight that things come to pass, becomings evolve , revolutions take shape. (N,45)

Things Fall Apart: The force of entropy makes all physical existence fatal. Eventually even time will die. The supreme evil in this existence is the atomized ego because it prevents radical creativity and formlessness—the process of giving value to existence. We need to contemplate and embrace mass death in order to understand our own role in the process of dying. Only when the disaster speaks through us can we truly live our death and thus give meaning to the fundamental character of our existence. 1% chance that we can become the beauty of existence will always outweigh. Aima 2k9 (Rahel, Columbia University, in the beginning was the language, and the language was gravity, April 13, 2009, http://killingdenouement.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/in-the-beginning-was-the-language-and-the-language-was-gravity/#comments)

In the beginning was the language, and the language was gravity. Before the beginning was infinite violence. When violence met language, there was conflict; at once collision and collusion. Conflict became a reproductive space of exchange, and atomisation became the original sin. We learnt what evil was, and it was the One. Gravity meanwhile was inscribed into (celestial) bodies, becoming the first legal contract between them. So it is that particles collide to produce



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fragmented planets and people, in an exchange of violent energy. Humans similarly collide to exchange pleasantries, and sometimes bodily fluids. On the level of language, morphemes collide to exchange ejaculations of speed and to reproduce meaning. In the eighteenth century, these forms might have been approached through money, character and root. Yet this beginning is simply the beginning of the rational, instinctual Man-form, and its subsequent trajectory through time and space. Following Nietzsche, the universe itself is a monster of energy without beginning, without end , not expanding but constantly transforming, in an infinite play of forces, and waves of forces which work like concepts to create embodied affects. Violence is this monstrous energy . The universe is like the Hindu Trimurti, a compound form of the eternally self creating Brahma, the mediating preserver, Vishnu, and the eternally self destroying Shiva. It may otherwise be thought of in terms of the tripartite symbol of Aum, whose three letters represent the primordial vibration of the universe. Each letter corresponds to a state of existence, from the lower curve’s waking consciousness to the dream state’s suspended consciousness to the upper curve’s unconsciousness or deep sleep – A-U-M respectively. The spot meanwhile is the absolute consciousness that hovers over the semicircle of the maya, sometimes conceived as the illusion of duality. As humans we exist in this illusory fold of maya, which both preserves and reproduces our world through conflict. Unlike the equivalent violence, the spot does not collide with the other cosmic forces. And although illustrative, the symbol is no longer experienced in the absolute: matereality has killed it along with the gods. Our own material world is like an atomised pomegran(i)te, and we exist as six billion unitary seeds in it, bounded by State membranes. At its core is a well of viscous rage; as with the Spanish term for pomegranate, granada, it holds explosive potential. Like the pomegranate, it is in constant tension of cracking open, as tec(h)tonic plates and demographics create frictions and fictions alike. This world is fragile and Earth is a victim; sometimes it fights back through ‘natural’ disasters like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that reveal its innermost violent urges. Global war-ming may be seen as the most advanced stage of this struggle, fought not only through the Earth’s material fabric, but through the atmosphere itself. As humans within this world, we may meanwhile either ossify into institutions, or decompose into death, after which nothing happens. Bataille suggests, “the world is purely parodic, in other words, that each thing seen is the parody of another, or is the same thing in a deceptive form”. Even as air is the atmospheric parody of water, human is the atmospheric parody of animal, and sexual desire is the instinctual parody of violence. War then becomes a parody of the initial monstrous violence, now evaporated into the atmosphere. And as humans, we ourselves are war. This sphere of war looks to have a maximal surface area, not unlike the cortex of the brain, replete with striated folds of ‘peace’. The State inseminates this sphere through the language of legality, similarly parodying violence through its own appropriations of war and peace. In military terminology, it is the ‘theatre of conflict’ where violence once again meets language, and is at once both a performative stage and a gynecological operating theatre. The language of war thus becomes an almost viral vaccination. It infects humans to breed cultures of conflict that create microfascisms and affects of dis-ease. At the same time, it retains a seductive possibility to inflame the mass tissue, and to consume the organs of both the State and the human. Crucially, “the b ody w ithout o rgans is not a dead body but a living body all the more alive and teeming once it has blown apart the organism and its organisation”. How then can we die without dying, and repopulate our bodies with multiplicities without recapitating God? Perhaps we can redesignate our instinctual procedures of satisfaction, transforming them into the disorganised forms of ‘ex-tincts’ and ‘ex-titutions’. The ex-titution will work as an intensified multiplicity of pores, spots and black holes, bounded not by walls or language, but by permeable membranes which replace collision with a free flow of concepts. Ex-tincts will become these hypergravitational black holes, dissolving any boundaries between internal and external forces to return to the initial violence. We will ourselves become constellations of ex-titutions through the parodic instinct closest to the base violence: desire. For as Deleuze and Guattari suggest, “whenever someone makes love, really makes love, that person constitutes a body without organs, alone and with the other person or people”. Yet ours is a world that cannot be loved to the point of death. If, following Larkin, all life is slow dying (decaying), then we must necessarily look to the language



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of disaster to speed up the process. Indeed, the disaster “does not dissuade us from dying; it invites us – escaping the time where it is always too late – to endure inopportune death, with no relation to anything save the disaster as return”. The disaster is a rhizomatic Superfold where “literature merely turns back on itself in an endless reflexivity” to uncover a “strange language within language”. Duende is this knowledge of disaster , as seeded through creative production. Perhaps it will even herald Nietzsche’s eternal return to the pre-primordial violence . We are bookended by the disaster – as long as it functions, the human does not yet, and anymore, exist. How then can we initiate the disaster; how can we move beyond the form of the man to become the superman? How, essentially, can we be beings without being ‘human beings’? In discussing ‘the pack’, Canetti notes that the unitary Man-form came about through incorporating “into himself, by transformations, all the animals he knew”. The more perfect his parodic folding was, the intenser his awareness of their numbers, and he felt what it was to be many. If man thus symbolically imprisons life in this way, the superman must work to free life, perhaps by radically redistributing its organs as a first step towards becoming an intensified ex-titution. The superman is indeed in control of all resources, whether organic, animal or mineral. In the realm of forces, it is even “in charge of the being of language (that formless, mute, unsignifying region where language can find its freedom even from whatever it has to say”. We have in actuality already dressed up as superman in the past, building fascist concentration camps that annihilate the human through the denial of speech. Within fascism, the theatre of conflict becomes a theatre of dominance, creating a cycle where ownership is possession is destruction. It is underwritten by a singular force of control – to dominate a woman, army, or land becomes one and the same consumptive action. Yet this control is not only external, but becomes inscribed into the fascist to reorder both instincts and organs through ritualistic repetition. It is especially seen in Theweleit’s accounts of the Freikorps, where sexual desire is reassigned to function simply for the pure joy of violent destruction. The telos of domination thus becomes not reproductive exchange, but a rationalized orgiastic annihilation. Fascinatingly, even as the prohibitive layers of language and amnesia are sloughed off to reveal the inner pool of violence, the Freikorps find themselves almost silenced by their violent acts. So it is that one of them is found to compare the undressing of a woman to getting a shot in the lungs. What might have been a loss of breath is literalised in their writing as an imagined self destruction. Perhaps they heed Blanchot’s caution that “it is not you who will speak; let the disaster speak in you, even if it be by your forgetfulness or silence. Yet if superman is a fascist, we must kill him too. And if brutal inhumanity is not enough, what lies beyond superman? This is to say, what new form will emerge that is neither God nor man nor superman? Concentration camps might the closest that western civilization has come to dehumanisation through language. Atomic bombs meanwhile might be the closest it has come to total destruction . One day a graviton bomb might be built that will destroy language by folding it in on itself. Until then, however, there will be “no explosion except a book”, whose only critique can be “an ontology for the annihilation of human beings”. This ‘book’ need not necessarily be a printed and bound book, but may be any kind of creative bomb. It must however hold plasmatic potential as conceptualised by Sergei Eisenstein, in its “rejection of once-and-forever allotted form, freedom from ossification, the ability to dynamically assume any form ”. Eisenstein sees this ‘plasmaticness’ as best embodied within fire, with its constant reinvention, expenditure and colourful consumption of forms. Crucially, fire is even eroticized in its mysterious allure and attractiveness which served to lead to a onetime designation of pyromania as a crime of a sexual nature. Yet like fascistic acts, it is consumptive and needs a constant refueling. The new bomb will burn not on the carbon of lifeforms or the silicon of dying stars, but will instead dip into an inner well of violence to write with both lactic acid and duende. At the same time, it must necessarily be outside State appropriation to become unconsumable . It must function like Disney’s films, which, for Eistensten, do not expose sunspots, but “themselves act like reflections of sunrays and spots across the screen of the earth”. These spots might be thought of as ex-tincts, and the screen as the disorganised face of the intensified ex-titution that we will become. This creative bomb will serve as the final weapon to cut –or perhaps blow – off superman’s rationalising head to become becoming itself , in the ex-titution of Bataille’s Acéphale. For in escaping from its head, “(s)he has found



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beyond himself not God, who is the prohibition against crime, but a being who is unaware of prohibition’. The Acéphale thus breaks the dualistic confines of the illusory maya to become part of the universal Tbrimurti multiplicity. (S)he is, “in the same eruption Birth and Death. (S)he is not a man. (S)he is not a god either. (S)he is not me but (s)he is more than me”. We are ferociously religious and religiously ferocious, and discover ourselves in him, “in other words as a monster”. When human we exist in relation to everything else through the forces of gravity and language, but having escaped from this primordial prison, we are finally irrational, ex-tinctual and free.

The affirmative approaches the world with the tautological rationality of viviocentrism – that is life-centeredness. Viviocentrism is a noble lie that informs all aspects of their advocacy and it is the same binary logic of natural mastery that justifies racism, sexism, anthropomorphism, etc. Opening our minds to death allows a transcendence of the tyranny of life and creates the conditions for the ultimate erosion of all borders and conceptions of the natural – put the burden on them to justify physical existence as a roll for the ballotMitchell Heisman (The opposite of a bullshitter, suicide practitioner, & University at Albany bachelor's degree in psychology) 2010

[Suicide Note, online @ http://www.suicidenote.info/, loghry]

There is a very popular opinion that choosing life is inherently superior to choosing death. This belief that life is inherently preferable to death is one of the most widespread superstitions. This bias constitutes one of the most obstinate mythologies of the human species. This prejudice against death , however, is a kind of xenophobia. Discrimination against death is simply assumed good and right. Absolutist faith in life is commonly a result of the unthinking conviction that existence or survival, along with an irrational fear of death, is “good”. This unreasoned conviction in the rightness of life over death is like a god or a mass delusion. Life is the “noble lie ”; the common secular religion of the West. For the conventional Westerner, the obvious leap of faith to make here is that one’s “self” and its preservation constitute the first measure of rationality. Yet if one begins reasoning with the unquestioned premise that life is good, or that one’s own life or any life is justified, this is very different from bringing that premise itself to be questioned rationally. Anyone who has ever contemplated his or her own mortality might question the ultimate sanity of the premise of self-preservation. Even if it is possible to live forever, moreover, this makes not an iota of difference as to the question of the value of existence. Most people are so prejudiced on this issue that they simply refuse to even consider the possibilities of death. Humans tend to be so irrationally prejudiced towards the premise of life that rational treatment of death seldom sees the light of day. Most people will likely fall back on their most thoughtless convictions, intuitions, and instincts, instead of attempting to actually think through their biases (much less overcome them). Yet is choosing death “irrational”? For what reason? For most people, “irrationality” apparently refers to a subjectivity experience in which their fear of death masters them — as opposed the discipline of mastering one’s fear of death. By “irrational”, they mean that they feel compelled to bow down before this master . An individual is “free”, apparently, when he or she is too scared to question obedience to the authority of the fear of death . This



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unquestioned slavery to the most common and unreasonable instincts is what, in practice, liberal-individualists call rationalism. Most common moral positions justify and cloak this fear of death. And like any traditional authority, time has gathered a whole system of rituals, conventions, and customs to maintain its authority and power as unquestionable, inevitable, and fated; fear of death as the true, the good, and the beautiful. For most people, fear of death is the unquestionable master that establishes all other hierarchies — both social hierarchies, and the hierarchies within one’s own mind . Most are humbly grateful for the very privilege of obedience and do not want to be free. I propose opening your mind towards the liberation of death ; towards exposing this blind faith in life as a myth, a bias, and an error. To overcome this delusion, the “magic spell” of pious reverence for life over death must be broken . To do so is to examine the faith in life that has been left unexamined; the naïve secular and non-secular faith in life over death. Opening one’s mind to death emerges from the attempt to unshackle one’s mind from the limitations of all borders. It leads to overcoming all biological boundaries, including borders between the “self” and the larger world . It reaches towards the elimination of biologically based prejudices altogether, including prejudice towards biological self preservation. The attempt to go beyond ethnocentrism and anthropomorphism leads towards overcoming the prejudices of what I call viviocentrism , or, life-centeredness . Just as overcoming ethnocentrism requires recognition of the provincialism of ethnic values, overcoming viviocentrism emerges from the recognition of the provincialism of life values. Viviocentric provincialism is exposed through an enlarged view from our planet, our solar system, our galaxy, and the limits of our knowledge of the larger cosmos we live in. Overcoming the prejudice against death, then, is only an extension and continuation of the Western project of eliminating bias, especially biologically based biases (i.e. race or sex based biases). The liberation of death is only the next step in the political logic that has hitherto sought to overcome prejudices based on old assumptions of a fixed biological human nature. Its opposite is an Aristotelian , teleological conception of nature; a nature of natural slaves , natural aristocracy , natural patriarchy , natural inferiority of women, natural racial kinds , natural heterosexuality and , finally, natural self - preservation . This older, teleological view suggests that individual self-preservation is an expression of a fixed biologically based nature that culture and/or reason is incapable of changing, altering, or overcoming. Just as it was considered unnatural or even insane that men be loosed from “natural” subordination to their king, or that women be unchained from “natural” subordination to their fathers and husbands, today it is considered unnatural that death be liberated from its “natural” subordination to the tyranny of life . From this point of view, one can recognize that the pro-choice stance on abortion and the right to die stance on euthanasia have already opened paths over conventional pro-life superstitions. These developments towards the liberation of biological death may lead to what may be the highest fulfillment of egalitarian progress: the equality of life and death. Further liberations of death should challenge one’s convictions in the same way that egalitarianisms of the past have challenged common assumptions and convictions: the equality of all men, the equality of the races, the equality of the sexes, the equality of sexual orientations, the equality of the biological and physical, and the equality of life and death. Overcoming the “will to live”, then, represents one of the final steps in overcoming the provincial and “primitive” life instincts probably inherited from our evolutionary past, i.e. inclinations towards patriarchy, authoritarianism, sexism, kinism, and racism . It is not only a contribution to civilization but a culmination of the progress of civilization, that is, the application of reason to human existence. Only when the will to live itself is civilized, can one be free to acknowledge that reason itself does not dictate a bias towards life .



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Their attempts to preserve life may seem benign, but allowing for the ego’s continual creation of new generations just condemns more people to a world of finitude and pain. Physical existence is bad and we should withdraw any affirmation of itLuchte, James (03/16/2009). "The Body of Sublime Knowledge: The Aesthetic Phenomenology of Arthur Schopenhauer". Heythrop journal (0018-1196), 50 (2), p. 228.

Returning to Schopenhauer's moral judgment against existence, and his advocacy of quieting the Will, we have established that he regards disinterestedness, will-less-ness as the criteria of art and ethics. Despite his disclosure of the aesthetic dimension to the sublime, in which such unambiguous will-less-ness is deemed impossible, he still expresses a moral judgment against the 'world' and calls on us to silence the will. His lament, his honest denunciation of life as deception, his declaration that pleasure is a temporary, illusory release, expresses an ontology and ethics of suffering, of nihilism, which for Nietzsche and Bataille is merely an attempt to escape from an abyss of desire and voluptuousness.29 While it is clear from Book Four that Schopenhauer is not propounding a exclusively negative philosophy of Will, it is also certain that his ultimate ethical judgment on life is negative. He acknowledges there exist affirmations of the Will, in our sense for the Will in the body and the will-to-live in sexual reproduction; he subverts this 'discovery', however, through an objection to the 'results' of such an affirmation. On the one hand, the will to live , a situation of limit, is the place where the Idea of the species itself becomes manifest, as the begetter is identical with the begotten in essence ; he even holds that the primary object of the will here is the genitals (as the object of knowledge is the brain). On the other hand, however , he connects this will to life with its opposite, death , in examples drawn from the myths of Adam, Proserpine and Shiva. The relationship between sexual procreation and death thereby becomes manifest, and thus the futility of life, as the curse of finitude is inflicted onto successive generations, casting numberless hordes into the jaws of pain, suffering and extinction (thus, for Schopenhauer, the shame of erotic life, and his misogyny). Schopenhauer thereby founds a nihilistic pessimism which, while acknowledging the actuality of life in its willing energy, simultaneously denies to this life any possibility of self-fulfilment or self-knowledge, thereby withdraw ing any affirmation of for our tragic predicament . His is a philosophy whose purpose is the preparation for death.

Fear of death is a function of the ego’s separation from externality; death is an illusion because our bodies are always already dead and dying—surrender is key to transcendence. Chopra ‘5 (Deepak, M.D. Chairman and co-founder of the chopra center for wellbeing, The Absolute Break Between Life and Death Is an Illusion, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/the-absolute-break-betwee_b_4843.html)

What bothers people about losing the body is that it seems like a terrible break or interruption. This interruption is imagined as going into the void; it is total personal extinction. Yet that perspective, which arouses huge fears, is limited to the ego. The ego craves continuity; it wants today to feel like an extension of yesterday . Without that thread to cling to, the journey day to day would feel disconnected, or so the ego fears. But how traumatized are you by having a new image come to mind, or a new desire? You dip into the field of infinite possibilities for any new thought, returning with a specific image out of the trillions that could possibly exist. At that moment, you aren’t the person you were a second ago . So, you are clinging to an illusion of continuity . Give it up this moment and you will fulfill St. Paul’s dictum to die unto death. You will realize that you have been discontinuous all along, constantly changing, constantly dipping into the ocean of possibilities to bring forth anything new. Death can be viewed as a total illusion because you are dead


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already. When you think of who you are in terms of I, me, and mine, you are referring to your past, a time that is dead and gone. Its memories are relics of time passed by. The ego keeps itself intact by repeating what it already knows. Yet life is actually unknown , as it has to be if you are ever to conceive of new thoughts, desires, and experiences. By choosing to repeat the past, you are keeping life from renewing itself. Why wait? You can be as alive as you want to be through a process known as surrender. This is the next step in conquering death. So far the line between life and death has become so blurry that it has almost disappeared. Surrender is the act of erasing the line entirely. When you can see yourself as the total cycle of death within life and the life within death, you have surrendered – the mystic’s most powerful tool against materialism. At the threshold of the one reality, the mystic gives up all need for boundaries and plunges directly into existence. The circle closes, and the mystic experiences himself as the one reality.

Embracing death is the gateway to transcendence and the solution to all earthly problemsChopra ‘7 (Deepak, India Abroad, (New york edition) new york, n.y. feb 2. vol. 37, iss. 18; pg. A12)

I do not think religion in any form, including Buddhism, is an answer to our problems. The reason I wrote Buddha is because I want to show that if we go beyond ideology, look and examine the nature of reality in its essence then we see everything is an interdependent co-arising and that we think in very simplistic terms—in linear, cause-effect relationships. But you can look at anything, for example a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina, and ask yourself if it is related to the disappearance of the marsh lands in Louisiana that are disappearing at the rate of an acre per 24 minutes, if it has anything to do with the deforestation in South East Asia which changes the global weather pattern, if it has anything to do with global warming which has to do with oil consumption, which has to do with the Iraq War, which has to do with social injustice and which has to do with radical poverty and extreme economic disparities. We can take a natural disaster and see it is linked to collective human behavior. We have this idea in our present way of thinking that we can solve one problem at a time. The war on AIDS, the war on malaria, the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on terrorism. How many wars are we going to fight? The whole thing is based on a lopsided idea of reality. You cannot solve one problem at a time. Ultimately, what we see as the problems in the world rise from the imbalances. Also, the problems exist because of a collective consciousness that is almost psychotic. The collective consciousness is only about ourselves—me and mine has become the internal dialogue. But Buddha taught us that we go beyond a me and mine dialogue, there is a field where we are all inseparably one. And when we experience the oneness, then we feel love, compassion, intuition, creativity, right choices and the world changes. Gandhi said: Can you be the change that you want to see in the world? --Consciousness cannot die – it exists outside spacetime Whatever it is that occurs at death, I have written in the book, I believe it deserves to be called a miracle. The miracle, ironically, is that we don’t die. The idea that we have a fixed body locked in space and time is a mirage. We all wonder what happens after we die and there is one fundamental question we need to address about one’s consciousness. It cannot die because it does not exist in spacetime. Something that exists outside space-time can neither be created nor destroyed. The only way you can conquer your fear of death is to experience that consciousness right now. The book will come as a surprise to people who do not have an idea of how death is perceived very differently in India. For us it should be a brief stopping point on an endless soul journey. Death can be miraculous, a doorway to a far more important event the beginning of the afterlife. Among other things, I use the Vedanta story of Savitri who comes home to find death, Lord Yama, waiting to take her husband. The monk Ramana teaches Savitri how to go beyond her separate self and experience an interconnectedness. And this is exactly what Buddha said—the first reason for suffering is because you consider yourself to be a separate self but the moment you go beyond the separate self, you see yourself as connected to everything that exists. You cannot be destroyed then .



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Linearity is a myth – time and space are constructions of perception. Death doesn’t really exist because the physical world is an illusion—immortal life is consciousness and it exists outside of time.Lanza 2009 (Robert Lanza is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is currently Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. "Does Death Exist? New Theory Says 'No'", http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-death-exist-new-theo_b_384515.html)

Consider an experiment that was recently published in the journal Science showing that scientists could retroactively change something that had happened in the past . Particles had to decide how to behave when they hit a beam splitter. Later on, the experimenter could turn a second switch on or off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determine d what the particle did in the past. Regardless of the choice you, the observer, make, it is you who will experience the outcomes that will result. The linkages between these various histories and universes transcend our ordinary classical ideas of space and time. Think of the 20- watts of energy as simply holo-projecting either this or that result onto a screen. Whether you turn the second beam splitter on or off,

it's still the same battery or agent responsible for the projection. According to Biocentrism, space and time are not the hard objects we think . Wave

your hand through the air - if you take everything away, what's left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. You can't see anything

through the bone that surrounds your brain. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together. Death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world. In the end, even Einstein admitted, "Now Besso" (an old friend) "has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing.

People like us...know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Immortality doesn't mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether .


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Extinction Good



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Dolan – Nuclear Winter GoodNuclear winter causes fast timeframe extinction of physical existence and that is the ultimate good – causes nirvana – superior to individual suffering, death, suicide and grief as we go one by one in this meaningless torture chamber – our evidence assumes their counter arguments.Dolan ‘2 (John Dolan, PhD in the writing of the Marquis de Sade from UC Berkeley, professor and essayist, “The Case for Nuclear Winter,” April 21, 2002, http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6495&IBLOCK_ID=35) [M Leap]

There are no nihilists any more. That fact is the most damning evidence of a great betrayal which has happened in the last half century. In 1945, when the Bomb gave us the option of quitting this dirty, rigged game of Darwinian strip poker, we learned that not one of the anti-life artists meant what they said. In a few years, all the anti-life art of the early twentieth century vanished. The artists who had made their careers documenting the horrors of life on earth and denouncing the cycle of animal existence yelped away like scared puppies the moment a real chance to end the suffering appeared. They saw that magnificent mushroom cloud and instead of falling down to worship it, they ran to the nearest church or Christian Science Reading Room or Socialist meeting hall. After convincing thousands of adolescents to kill themselves in the name of holy despair, these sleazy careerists ran to hug the knees of GAIA, the bloody mother. They Chose Life -- the swine! Go ahead, pick a culture, any culture! Any culture you can name, during any historical period you choose, will furnish hundreds of examples of anti-life rhetoric which was taken very, very seriously -- up until the moment when it actually meant something. Take, say, Europe in the nineteenth century, that cheery and bustling period. OK; here's its greatest philosopher on the subject: "If you imagine...the sum total of distress, pain and suffering which the sun shines upon, you will be forced to admit that it would have been better if the surface of the earth were still as crystalline as that of the moon....For the world is Hell, and men are on the one had the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it." That was Schopenhauer, telling the Germans in their bristly abstract way what Darwin told the English in their fussier, more detailed language: there is no point but suffering. There is no hidden redemptive meaning in any of this . It's just an unfortunate industrial accident, organic life . Both Schopenhauer and Darwin resorted to animal examples to convey the horror which summed up the world. They were trying to overcome the popular heresy that somehow, it all must "balance out" somehow. It doesn't, because it was never designed to do so: "compare the pleasure of an animal engaged in eating another animal with the pain of the animal being eaten." By the beginning of the twentieth century, Schopenhauer and Darwin were in play in the higher European circles, mixing and strengthening each other. It was the bravest moment in the history of our species; something truly dangerous, a final anti-life epiphany, seemed ready to happen. This is what poor sweet Nietzsche meant with his heartbreaking faith in "the men who are coming." Nihilism's one great weakness was that it had always been an elite cult, not considered transmissible to the masses. This was in fact why Buddhism was replaced by a mindless demotic cult like Hinduism in India: Nirvana was too cold a doctrine for peasants who equated fecundity with happiness. But in the early twentieth century, a demographic anomaly appeared: the elite was big, and getting bigger. They brought their cult with them; art began serving as the propaganda wing of Nihilism. What we call "Modernism" was actually a multimedia offensive which was beginning to make Nihilism palatable to the masses. The fuzzy "Modern/Postmodern" distinction is best seen as a change in popular religion: from 1910-1945, art did an honorable job of preparing the masses to abandon their attachment to the biosphere; from 1945 to the present, art borrows Nihilist images, diction and narrative without the least intention of employing them to free us from attachment to organic life. The echoes of that dangerous early twentieth-century art are still audible: "I've always been surprised by everyone's going on living." Birth, and copulation


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and death. That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks: Birth, and copulation, and death. I've been born, and once is enough. You don't remember, but I remember, Once is enough. It's sad for the dog. He lives only because he was born, just like me.... So they sang. And many believed them. Maybe a few of them really meant it -- Schopenhauer especially. What would Schopenhauer have said about nuclear weapons? My guess is he'd be all for them; he was a serious man, an honorable man. But the rest -- they never meant it, and only talked so grandly against Life because they knew there was no alternative, no way to end the world. When the cat's away, the mice will ham it up. But since 1945, they self-censored themselves, to the effect that no matter how many Nihilist images you may borrow, you will do nothing truly dangerous -- nothing that could make anyone press that nuclear trigger. You can wear all the black you want; you can worship suicide -- individual suicide, that is -- ; you can write songs about how life sucks; but you can't mean it. Of course, not everybody's in on the double-talk scam. Those dangerous anti-lifers are still floating around, infecting those naive enough to listen to them. Cobain and Courtney are the classic example: both wore the rags, the scowls, the sulk; both screamed and ranted against life; but only one of them ever believed it. He, poor bastard, took it all seriously; she, a much more typical representative of the treacherous 20th-century avant garde, knew better. When you think of poor Cobain now, it all seems inevitable, from the moment he chose that fatal name for his band. "Nirvana": a quaint Buddhist term, taken by most American bohemians to mean something like "nice peaceful feeling." But that's not what it means at all: "nirvana" means, literally, "the blowing out of a candle." Extinction, a return to stillness. Poor Cobain! He took it seriously, and made Nirvana for himself...and Courtney inherited, pouting all the way to the bank. They're all Courtneys, the ones who still live. Lou Reed, who invented black, wrote hymns to heroin as the best available anti-life, and provided the soundtrack for God knows how many thousands of adolescent suicides, showed up recently at a memorial service for John "All You Need Is Love" Lennon. There he was, up on the stage with a dozen other rich old popstar vampires, singing treacly Beatles songs. They were praying, really -- praying to be granted another few years of life. "Choose life!" That's a vulture's favorite proverb, and these wrinkled undead were singin' it with feeling. The ones who meant it, even a little -- they die. Sid died because he believed it; John Lydon said so, giggling at his dead comrade's stupidity in a recent interview. Sid, he explained, took all the punk stuff seriously, and died of it. Lydon knew better, he explained from poolside. He looked over at his pool frequently during the interview -- scanning his LA mansion, just overjoyed with his good sense and deriving an especially piquant satisfaction from the thought of poor old Sid. Johnny chose life. It's not hard to see why a popstar chooses life; his life comes at the expense of everyone else's. A vampire universe feels great -- to a vampire. But what about the rest of us , the nobodies? The feeding cows? What do we have to lose? There's always been a lot of preaching against suicide. In some way, any choice to choose non-life frightens the ruling vampires. Their favorite argument is, of course, guilt: "Think of the pain you leave behind you!" I remember a scraggly hippie mystic on Sproul denouncing suicide as "a slap in the face to everybody who loves you," and adding, "Even the worst bum on Skid Row has somebody who loves him." It impressed me at the time; I thought he must have had some special knowledge of the affectional backgrounds of bums which I didn't possess. It was several years before I knew for certain that he was simply preaching, another damn Christian-without-Christ babbling the ruling vampires' cliches. Suicide is unpatriotic; that's why it offends them. It deprives the vampires of a jugular to sip. How can you not like this boneyard? This is the finest torture-chamber in the universe! How dare you opt out of it! But since 1945, the vampire lords have had another, much stronger reason to fear the idea of suicide: individual suicide is only Nuclear Winter writ small. Nuclear Winter is universal Nirvana. And that makes it utterly different from individual suicide -- because there will be no survivors to mourn and grieve. There will be no mourning and grief at all, ever again. Thus nuclear winter offers a true cure for suffering -- which the sermons against suicide do not. OK; you decide not to kill yourself because it will hurt your parents, friends, pit bull, roommates, chess club pals, whatever. So what? You're gonnna go anyway, and in some way much more agonizing than a bullet to the head: cancer, car wreck, genetic glitch, rafting accident, heart valve pop. And when you do, that suffering of the survivors will begin, the ten billionth wail of



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grief heard on Earth. And the grieving die in their turn, and when they go another wail sets up....It's not just horrible -- it's silly. Just plain dumb. Squint at it -- draw your head back just a little and squint at it -- and it's truly "laughable, man": these creatures whose life consists of a ride down a conveyor belt towards a meat grinder, making a continual wail of surprise as another one goes over the edge. Every one a surprise. "Oh! He went in! How could this happen?" "Ah, she fell! My God!" Well Duh. What'd you expect? That's what suffering is: going over the edge one at a time. The experience of individual death while the world grinds on. What would happen in the Nuclear Winter scenario is utterly different: all jump into the meatgrinder at once. No one is left to suffer or mourn . When some die and some live, there is suffering; when all die, blown out like a candle, there is no suffering. There is something else, something for which we have no name. But one thing is clear: it is not suffering. "We shall not suffer, for we shall not be." It has been done on a small scale -- communal suicide, oblivion. The Old Believers; Jonestown; and some of the tribes hunted for sport by the Europeans. The Carib -- the last Carib jumped off a cliff rather than be taken. As did the last few bands of Tasmanians. They saw the suffering of their children ahead, and took the kids with them over the cliff. Are they were right. Imagine the prospects of a Tasmanian child in the hands of the British colonists who had killed its parents for sport. Life as a souvenir, mascot, bum-boy or -girl, stuffed exhibit in a museum… for what? So that in ten generations, one of its partial descendants might live to collect a guilt-dole from the Australian government? So that in another two generations, an even more attenuated descendant could pen a jargon-stuffed "indictment" of the crime, hoping for publication and a tenure-track affirmative-action job at a new regional polytech? The cliff-edge has more dignity and sense. We have given other species the gift of oblivion, sent them over the cliff: the Mammoth, the Moa Eagle, the Tasmanian Wolf...all the finest species, really, are going or gone. A hundred years from now, when all the big cats are gone, no one will understand how we thought the life of a hundred million Tamils worth that of even one Bengal Tiger. Life on earth hit its peak during the Ice Ages, and we are now killing off the few species from that period who survived our first coup, ten thousand years ago. We have very little to lose, destroying the remaining fauna, now that the best is gone. The lives of all the horrible humans in Houston are not worth even one Columbia Mammoth. So we have guides sent ahead of us into oblivion. When we pull the plug, press the button, drop the nuclear dime on ourselves, we will suffer no more than the Mammoth suffers. We owe them; let's join them. We can make our first act in the afterlife a formal apology to the Tasmanian Wolf, the Cave Bear, the Mammoth. But at least their suffering is over now. The Mammoths' suffering ended when the last calf, watching its mother being hacked to death by ugly apes wearing caribou skins, trumpeted in shock and pain and tried to run -- and was hacked to death, screaming, then silent. And when its life went out -- the blowing out of a candle -- the suffering of all Mammoths ceased, gave way to something entirely different: Nirvana. The Nirvana of the Mammoths, where they wait for us now. But we have to be sure of one thing: that it will be oblivion, death for all, rather than another partial slaughter. That would be worse even than the present. The thought of a post-nuke world of wretched survivors is the only real argument against detonation now. That's why the notion of Nuclear Winter is crucial . If, say, a nuclear war killed even five billion of us, it would leave a billion sobbing, burned survivors; and their offspring, mutant children limping across a boneyard; and hundreds of billions of mammals, birds, and reptiles mourning their kin. This is not Nirvana. Agreed. But that argument has been specious since the early 1980s, when a team of physicists including that annoying geek Carl Sagan suggested that a major nuclear war would create a cloud of ash which would blot out the sun for decades, blocking 99% of solar energy for a period of three to 12 months, and thus extinguishing the photosynthetic engine which runs this big green torture chamber called Earth. Here's their scenario: "Nuclear explosions will set off firestorms in the cities and surrounding forest areas. The small particles of soot are carried high into the atmosphere. The smoke will block the sun's light for weeks or months. The land temperatures would fall below freezing. This combination of reduced temperatures and reduced light levels would have catastrophic ecological consequences. Average light levels would be below the minimum required for photosynthesis during the first 30-40 days after the explosion and most fresh water would be frozen. '...the possibility of the extinction of Homo



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Sapiens cannot be excluded.' This effect is similar to what may have killed the dinosaurs." You know you feel the pull of it already. How much of our alleged "fear" of nuclear war is longing -- lust for Nirvana, disguising itself as pious horror? In Berkeley, avid hobbyists went around spraypainting the sidewalks in a circle a half-mile around the Campanile, showing the range of "total destruction" from a nuclear blast over the campus. I remember seeing one of them at work -- a skinny hippie who would've looked good in a pilgrim hat and black coat -- laboring over his stencil, biting his lip in what I then took for concentration but now seems more like...pleasure. He was having The Dream: that bomb-bay camera shot of a dull static city suddenly jolted by the first blast, a hemisphere of fire, a half-sun umbrella over downtown...then the upwash, the stalk which will flatten out in the upper air to form the toadstool cap...now cut to houses sucked inward to fuel the blast, no sooner vacuumed toward the epicenter than the full blast whipsaws them outwards, roofs and cars and windows blown out by the great breath...and then, the post-coital smoke: pillars of it, from the few ruins which have enough energy left to burn. A city of chimneys and rubble. The Japanese, the only ones to have felt the breath of oblivion, are more honest than we in acknowledging its beauty. No Anime is complete without at least one annihilation of a city by atomic weapons. In Akira you get a bonus: you get to see Neo-Tokyo destroyed not once but twice by mushroom cloud. There is no pretense, in Akira, that this is a bad thing; it is magnificent, a consummation devoutly to be wished. If any of what I am saying has truth, then one would expect the ruling committees to work for the destruction of all nuclear weapons, so that they can rule with the same security as the thousands of other cruel tribal elites, pre-1945. And in fact, that's what's happening now, focused on the neutralization of the nukes in the former USSR. Nuclear Winter will occur only if there is a major detonation -- a real, Cold-War style genocidal war. It cannot be accomplished by small-scale nuclear war: the erasure of a city here or there, a few missile bases melted, the boiling of a sea or two in order to cook a few enemy subs. It must be the US-USSR scenario. Now you see why so many artists who were in love with little wars feared that one so much. A small war is material for a million artists and writers and songsters. Take Vietnam: they can't shut up about it. It was the classic evil little war: a lot of killing in a fecund jungle, with no chance at all of ending the world. But none of the artists who loved little wars wanted to endorse The Big One; that was bad for business. That meant canceling the whole season. They sang, painted, wrote, and tap-danced down the streets against it. Or thought they were doing so; because their depictions of that sacred mushroom cloud were often beautiful in spite of the artist's conscious intention. The lust for Nirvana shone from them, unnoticed as the porn aspect of a nineteenth-century nude statue. Now there's a push, a big one, encompassing all the bought artists, the spooks, the rich, the governments, to buy up and destroy the Russian nukes. It's not like they're against nukes; the West has no intention of giving them up. They like to play with them, like suburban dads who clean their guns on the weekend. But they don't want the world to end. So they will do anything to buy up the Russian nukes. All those movies in the past ten years about Russian nukes "falling into the wrong hands" were cover for the real process, which involved those nukes falling into the wrongest hands of all: the people who plan to DESTROY those nukes, people who like this world and want it to continue. For the first time in history, we can vote against the incumbent. For the first time in the history of organic life -- the first time in over three billion years of "birth and copulation and death" -- the pitiful animals crawling over the surface of the planet have the power to choose to exist or to cease to exist. Imagine a prisoner condemned to be tortured to death , huddling in a cell waiting for the next call to the bloody floor where his teeth are extracted, one by one. One day someone slips a knife under the door of his cell. For the first time, he has the option of ending a life of pain. And, like a true slave, he throws the knife away in horror , hands it over to the guards so that he may continue to be dragged out and tortured at their pleasure. We are not the only lives at stake. We have a duty to the dead-and to the unborn. Life reached its peak at the edge of the glaciers; when they receded, we, ugly tropical scavengers, killed all the great mammals who had walked the colder and grander world. They are waiting for us: the mammoths , the last Siberian Tiger and the Tasmanian Wolf -- and the Tasmanians, the Caribs, and the other billions of lives we can erase and avenge and join, with a single step, over the cliff , a few seconds of rushing air, and then Nirvana.



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Viviocentrism 2NCThey have no defense of physical existence – we’re just living to keep the human race going – the Western ego socially constructs and protects individuals so they can pass their DNA on to future generations and continue marching down the road to nowhere – that’s DnG ’72 – It is impossible to quantify the desirability of life: the difference between a living being and a non-living being is ultimately superimposed by anthropomorphism – Additionally, there’s a racism DA – attempts to maintain viviocentrism are akin to the racist attempt to maintain a flawed vision of the natural superiority of particular ways of being over others. Organic and non-organic are ultimately indistinguishable so the 1ac has zero impact, the whole thing is a noble lie based on a flawed teleological assumption about nature – that’s Heisman ‘10 – the western egoic bias towards survival or the value of any life is an irrational subservience to the fear of death and it involves notions of mastery and natural superiority that are coterminous with justifications for racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, etc. – They have no definition of what life is and no justification for biological survival; by voting Aff, you’re just continuing the noble lie of viviocentrism along with its ideological baggage and creating more future generations to suffer and then die in this hate and pain filled world – that’s Heisman ’10 and Luchte ‘9 – they have comparatively little offense against non-organic existence – here’s more evidence for all of the above, there’s a moral obligation to take action to overcome life-centeredness:Mitchell Heisman (The opposite of a bullshitter, suicide practitioner, & University at Albany bachelor's degree in psychology) 2010

[Suicide Note, online @ http://www.suicidenote.info/, loghry]

The conventional distinction between life and non-life is an extension of anthropomorphism. The belief that life forms are special matter distinct from other forms of matter is not simply a form of romantic ism ; it is, more specifically, a form of animism.

From the perspective of unadulterated materialism, an individual human is no less a holistic construct than social group holism; the Western “individual” is a social construct. Just as a human being may drink a glass of water teeming with microscopic life, yet regard the water as

physical matter, the entire process of an individual human swimming, and then drowning, in an ocean could be regarded as workings of physical processes without any distinct regard for the “human” material. Willing equality, taken to its

extreme, is equivalent to willing death in equality with unadulterated materialism. Since the quantity of inorganic matter dwarfs known quantities of organic matter, democratically speaking, nonlife or death wins the final victory on grounds of democratic

justice. Claims of aristocracy, supremacy, or “dignity” above matter are reflections of bias, self-interest, or instinct. Special pleading for the moral superiority of life forms that suffer or feel pain is viviocentrism. Suffering is (and should be) reducible to material, chemical reactions in the brains and bodies of animals. The prejudice that life or “animate” matter is superior to inanimate matter, like the prejudice against distinct racial groups, is a form of discrimination. Just as moral action to overcome ethnocentrism

leads one to treat non-kin as kin, moral action to overcome life’s self-centeredness (viviocentrism) leads one to treat the non-



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organic as organic — to treat death as life and life as death. The overcoming of viviocentrism follows directly in the footsteps of humanism in overcoming of the kinship-centric values in which Homo sapiens originated. Willing death is thus a child of humanism and the logical culmination of its rational quest

for universalism. Conventional reductionism holds that the biological and physical are ultimately equal, i.e. the biological can be reduced to the physical. Yet the only time when the biological and physical are most literally equal is when the biological system is dead. Let me put this in

more common sense terms. If biology is fully consistent with the physical, then what has all the struggle been about? How is it possible to not survive? In order for “survival” to make any empirical sense, there must be, in some way, a distinction between life and non-life . It appears, however, that the problem of defining life is not fully possible because the definition requires an accounting of the particular environment that an organism survives against, and such environments can be incompatible or opposite for different organisms or different species .

[THIS EVIDENCE ALSO DISCUSSES THE MOVE FOR “EQUALITY” AND THAT THE ULTIMATE EQUALITY IS THE RECOGNITION THAT LIFE AND DEATH ARE INDISTINCT]



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Freedom ModuleDeath, and specifically causing future deaths is good – it is only way to ensure freedom and satisfaction for those who would otherwise be doomed to a life of tormentCastronovo ‘2K (Russ, Jean Wall Bennett Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, author of Fathering the Nation: American Genealogies of Slavery and Freedom and Necro Citizenship: Death, Eroticism, and the Public Sphere in the Nineteenth-Century United States and coeditor of Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics. “Political Necrophilia” Boundary 2 27.2 MUSE)

Infanticide not only defeats the slaveholder, who views motherhood as the reproduction of capital; it also thwarts history. Forcibly releasing her child from the struggles of existence, the slave mother ensures that he or she will never accrue historical weight, instead remaining innocent of experience, memory, and trauma. The poet-as-slave mother idealizes infant purity in an effort to withstand the traffic of

worldly context. Death extricates the innocent from an institutional circulation that leaves the flesh scarred and the spirit ‘‘marr’d.’’ Rescued from physical existence before the disorderly accumulation of slave experience sets in, the subject of

this poetic address achieves emancipation through a severe final estrangement. Emancipation occurs when there is no subject left to emancipate. Within the lines of this poem and within the limits of ideology, freedom is readily realized because the infant’s life itself lacks realization. A morbid politics holds out the promise of returning the subject to an absolute existence; in psychoanalytic terms, death defines an inorganic state impervious to change where satisfaction is permanent. Freud’s idea of the death instinct as ‘‘the most universal endeavor of all living substance’’ can be honed to provide insight into the political desire that freights the drive death within emancipatory rhetoric.24 Whereas Freud offers thanatos as a transcendent key to human behavior, an understanding of death as inescapably historical and discursive impedes the

naturalization of liberty as a matter of instinct or choice. Death, as an abstract final category, attracts citizens because it abnegates the constant struggle to secure freedom as well as the enduring anxiety that this freedom will vanish. This oscillation expresses fort /da: the dismaying recognition that the source of pleasure is gone (fort ) alternates with the satisfaction that the source of pleasure is here (da). In death, no need exists to

play this fort /da game because the inorganic state ensures that no source of pleasure will ever disappear, as pleasure itself has been removed beyond a dynamic world of change and fluctuation. Thanatos so infuses the citizen’s desire because death makes freedom irrelevant by locating the subject in a realm beyond striving or contention. Death offers noncontingent political satisfaction by promising that the subject will not have to enter a material world that historicizes, modifies, and makes liberty conditional. Death exempts the slave mother’s child from the institutional fort /da game he [or she] is destined to lose; his original freedom suffers no abridgment from the daily demands of masters and overseers. Death secures ‘‘absolute repose,’’ ensuring that neither law nor custom will impinge on ‘‘innate’’ rights.25 The slave child’s freedom never becomes semantic; it never accrues texture or weight, and instead remains as pure as the sublime heights of Emerson’s verse. For the slave child,

freedom is uncompromised, but it is necessarily also without substance, purely a question of syntax.

Embracing our deaths is liberating and redemptive.Sanderson ‘07 (Matthew Walter, PhD dissertation Southern Illinois University, “RELIGIOUS SUBLIMITY AND THE TRAGIC VIEW OF LIFE IN KANT, SCHOPENHAUER AND NIETZSCHE,” August, ProQuest)

Schopenhauer agrees with Socrates that philosophy is to be defined as the practice of preparing for death (WWR II, 463). Of course, there are many prescriptions for how to properly prepare for death, including the recommendation, found most explicitly in Heidegger and Camus, that we must face death heroically, in the full awareness of anxiety, without any hope for an afterlife. Or those who, following Dylan Thomas, urge us to ‘rage against the dying of the light,’ to, in other words, live as though one will live forever and go down fighting. Schopenhauer, however, understands philosophical preparation for death in terms of the portrait of Socrates found in Plato’s Phaedo. Accordingly, to prepare



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for death is to believe in some form of immortality and thereby conquer one’s anxiety in the face of death. Schopenhauer, then, believes that the goal ought to be facing death with equanimity. This ideal is clear from the following quote where Schopenhauer discusses the unique attitude toward death held by the religious saint or what he calls in this passage, ‘the resigned:’ “As a rule, the death of every good person is peaceful and gentle; but to die willingly, to die gladly, to die cheerfully, is the prerogative of the resigned, of him who gives up and denies the will-to-live” (WWR II, 508). Thus, Schopenhauer prescribes not simply giving in to death – in fact, he regards suicide as the worst mistake an individual can make – but instead resigning oneself to it in a willing, peaceful and even cheerful manner. For Schopenhauer, the ideal is not simply to accept death, but to also, in some sense, look forward to it as an event of liberation and redemption. In other words, Schopenhauerian resignation before death is not nihilistic, for it is motivated by the bliss that attends the discovery of eternal life, not by the joy of pure self-annihilation.



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Precautionary PrincipleVote negative on the precautionary principle – it is always safer to presume someone will regret being brought into physical existence because no one suffers when they are not brought into physical existence. Benatar ‘6

(David, Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Cape Town, Better Never to Have Been, pg 153-155)

It is not true, of course, that everybody is glad not to have been aborted. Professor Hare considers the challenge such people pose to his

argument. However, he argues that they must wish that had they been glad to have been born, then nobody should have aborted them.

The problem with this response is that it assumes that the preference to have been born is the moral touchstone. Had he taken the preference not to have been born as the standard, then it could be said that those who are glad to have been born must wish that had they not been glad, then somebody should have aborted them. It is obvious that had either kind of person had the opposite preference to the one he does have, the Golden Rule argument would produce the opposite conclusion to the one it does produce when his preference is the way it actually is. Thus Professor’s Hare’s response to the case of those who are not glad to have been born will not do. How might we decide which preference—for or against having been born—should prevail? One argument that may be advanced for favouring the preference for having been born is that most fetuses develop into people that have this preference. Thus, working on the presumption that this preference will result is statistically more reliable. However, there are two reasons why, statistical reliability notwithstanding, this preference should not predominate. First is a principle of caution. Followers of this principle recognize

that nobody suffers if one mistakenly presumes a preference not to have been born, but people do suffer if one mistakenly presumes a preference to have been born. Imagine that one presumes that a fetus will develop into somebody who will be glad to

have been born. One therefore does not abort the fetus. If one’s presumption was mistaken, and this fetus develops into somebody who was not glad to have been born, then there is somebody who suffers (for a lifetime) from one’s having made the wrong presumption. Imagine now that one makes the opposite presumption—that the fetus will develop into somebody who will not be glad to have been born. Therefore one aborts that fetus. If this presumption was mistaken, and this fetus would have developed into somebody who would have been glad to have been born, there will be nobody who suffers from the mistaken presumption. It might be objected that there is somebody who suffers from the latter presumption—namely the fetus that is aborted. There are two points that can be made in response. First, this line of reply is not open to Professor

Hare. He believes that where an abortion will be performed the ‘foetus does not have now, at the present moment, properties which are reasons for not killing it, given that it will die in any case before it acquires those properties which ordinary human adults and even children have, and which are our reasons for not killing them’.²8 Professor Hare’s argument is explicitly about the potential of the fetus rather than any properties it has as a fetus. Secondly, to claim (contrary to Professor Hare) that a fetus does now possess properties that can make it the victim of abortion is to undercut the point of a potentiality argument, such as the Golden Rule argument, against abortion. The entire point of an argument from potentiality is to show that abortion can be wrong even if the fetus does not, as a fetus, have properties that are reasons for not killing it. A second

reason for favouring a preference not to have been born is that coming into existence, as I argued in Chapters 2 and 3, is always a serious harm. If those arguments are sound then people who think that they were benefited by being brought into existence are mistaken and their preference to have come into existence is thus based on a mistaken belief. It would be quite odd to employ a Golden Rule (or Kantian) argument that rests on a mistaken premiss. If a preference is uninformed why should it dictate how we should treat others? Imagine, for example, a widespread preference for having been introduced

to cigarettes, which was based on ignorance of the risks of smoking. Employing Professor Hare’s rule, people with such a desire could reason: ‘I am glad that I was encouraged to smoke, and thus I should encourage others to smoke.’ Such reasoning is troubling enough when the preference for having been encouraged to smoke is formulated in the full knowledge of the dangers of smoking. But where the preference is uninformed it cannot even claim to be an (accurate) all things considered judgement and is thus even more

troubling. Similarly, that many people are glad to have come into existence is not a good reason for bringing others into existence, especially where the preference for existence arises from the mistaken belief that one was benefited by being brought into existence.



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We have an ethical duty to prevent future lives – being born always necessitates suffering while there’s no impact to nonexistence because there is nobody to be deprived of pleasure in the first place.Benatar ‘97 (David, Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Cape Town, "Why it is better never to come into existence." American Philosophical Quarterly 34.3 (1997): 345+. General OneFile.)

There is a common assumption in the literature about future possible people that, all things being equal, one does no wrong by bringing into existence people whose lives will be good on balance. This assumption rests on another, namely that being brought into existence (with decent life prospects) is a benefit (even though not being born is not a harm). All this is assumed without argument. I wish to argue that the underlying assumption is erroneous. Being brought into existence is not a benefit but always a harm. Many people will find this deeply unsettling claim to be counter-intuitive and will wish to dismiss it. For this reason, I propose not only to defend

the claim, but also to suggest why people might be resistant to it. As a matter of empirical fact, bad things happen to all of us. No life is without hardship. It is easy to think of the millions who live a life of poverty or of those who live much of their lives with some disability. Some of us are lucky enough to be spared these fates, but most of us who do nonetheless suffer ill-health at some stage during our lives. Often the suffering is excruciating, even if it is only in our final days. Some are condemned by nature to years of frailty. We all face death.(1) We infrequently contemplate the harms that await any new-born child: pain,

disappointment, anxiety, grief and death.or any given child we cannot predict what form these harms will take or how severe they will be, but we can be sure that at least some of them will occur. (Only the prematurely deceased are spared some but not the last.) None of this befalls the nonexistent. Only existers suffer harm. Of course I have not told the whole story. Not only bad things but also good things

happen only to those who exist. Pleasures, joys, and satisfaction can be had only by existers. Thus, the cheerful will say, we must weigh up the pleasures of life against the evils. As long as the former outweigh the latter, the life is worth living. Coming into being with such a life is, on this view, a benefit. However, this conclusion does not follow. This is because there is a crucial difference between harms and benefits which makes the advantages of existence over non-existence(2) hollow but the disadvantages real. Consider pains

and pleasures as exemplars of harms and benefits. It is uncontroversial to say that: 1) the presence of pain is bad and that 2) the presence of pleasure is good. However, such a symmetrical evaluation does not apply to the absence of pain and pleasure, for: 3) the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone, whereas 4) the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation. My view about the asymmetry between 3) and

4) is widely shared. A number of reasons can be advanced to support this. First, this view is the best explanation for the commonly held view that while there is a duty to avoid bringing suffering people into existence, there is no duty to bring happy people into being. In other words,

the reason why we think that there is a duty not to bring suffering people into existence is that the presence of this suffering would be bad (for the sufferers) and the absence of the suffering is good (even though there is nobody to enjoy the absence of suffering). In contrast to this, we think that there is no duty to bring happy people into existence because, while their pleasure would be good, its absence would not be bad (given that there would be nobody who would be deprived of it).



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Factory Farms Module

There is no justification to exclude other beings from our moral calculationSinger ’01 (Peter, a chair in bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, “To: Richard A. Posner” June 11, http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/interviews-debates/200106--.htm)

People often say, without much thought, that all human beings are infinitely more valuable than any animals of any other species. This view owes more to our own selfish interests and to ancient religious teachings that reflect these interests than to reason or impartial moral reflection. What ethically significant feature can there be that all human beings but no nonhuman animals possess? We like to distinguish ourselves from animals by saying that only humans are rational, can use language, are self-aware, or are autonomous. But these abilities, significant as they are, do not enable us to draw the requisite line between all humans and nonhuman animals. For there are many humans who are not rational, self-aware, or autonomous, and who have no language—all humans under 3 months of age, for a start. And even if they are excluded, on the grounds that they have the potential to develop these capacities, there are other human beings who do not have this potential. Sadly, some humans are born with brain damage so severe that they will never be able to reason, see themselves as an independent being,

existing over time, make their own decisions, or learn any form of language. If it would be absurd to give animals the right to vote, it would be no less absurd to give that right to infants or to severely retarded human beings. Yet we still give equal consideration to their interests. We don't raise them for food in overcrowded sheds or test household cleaners on them. Nor should we. But we do these things to nonhuman

animals who show greater abilities in reasoning than these humans. This is because we have a prejudice in favor of the view that all humans are somehow infinitely more valuable than any animal. Sadly, such prejudices are not unusual. Like racists and sexists, speciesists say that the boundary of their own group is also a boundary that marks off the most valuable beings from all the rest. Never mind what you are like, if you are a member of my group, you are superior to all those who are not members of my group. The speciesist favors a larger group than the racist and so has a large circle of concern; but all these prejudices use an arbitrary and morally irrelevant fact—membership of a race, sex, or species—as if it were morally crucial. The only acceptable limit to our moral concern is the point at which there is no awareness of pain or pleasure, and no preferences of any kind. That is why pigs count, but lettuces don't. Pigs can feel pain and pleasure. Lettuces can't.

Human extinction isn’t so bad - The suffering humans inflict on animals outweighs all human suffering Ball ‘03 (Matt, January 5, 2003, Vegan Outreach, Working in Defense of Animals, http://www.veganoutreach.org/enewsletter/20030105.html)

A few years into the new millennium, with several decades of animal advocacy behind us, it is shocking that the number of animals exploited and killed in the United States has far more than doubled since 1975. At the same time, the treatment of most of these animals is worse today than ever before. Although every animal in a lab, pound, or fur farm deserves our consideration, ~99 percent of all the animals killed in the United States are killed to be eaten. In recent years, the annual increase in the number of land animals slaughtered for food has

been much greater than the total number of animals killed for fur, in labs, and at shelters, combined. In other words, each year in the United States: The number of animals killed in shelters is approximately equal to the human population of New Jersey. The number of animals killed for fur is approximately equal to the human population of Illinois. The number of animals killed in experimentation is approximately equal to the human population of Texas. The increase in the number of land animals


http://www.veganoutreach.org/enewsletter/20030105.html

http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/interviews-debates/200106--.htm


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farmed and slaughtered is greater than the total human population of the United States. The total number of mammals and birds farmed and slaughtered is approximately equal to one and two-thirds times the entire human population of Earth. Hidden away from the public eye, farmed animals endure an excruciating existence. Written descriptions can't convey the true horror of what goes on in factory farms. Photographs and videos come closer – layer hens with open sores, covered with feces, sharing their tiny cage with decomposing corpses of fellow hens whose wings, faces, or feathers were trapped in the cage such that they couldn’t get to food or water (Compassion Over Killing’s “Hope for the Hopeless”); pigs sodomized by metal poles, beaten with bricks, skinned while still conscious (PETA’s “Pig Farm Investigation”); steers, pigs, and birds desperately struggling on the slaughterhouse floor after their throats are cut (Farm Sanctuary’s “Humane Slaughter?”, PETA’s

“Meet Your Meat”). But even these tapes can’t communicate the smell, the noise, the desperation, and most of all, the fact that each of these animals – and billions more unseen by any camera or any caring eye – continue to suffer like this, every minute of every day.

Humans force animals in factory farms to endure a fate worse than deathMitchell ‘03 (Brian's Poultry Services Investigation “Statement of Whistleblower Sally Mitchell”http://www.goveg.com/brianspoultry_sally.asp)

The next barn was absolute hell. You wouldn’t believe what it was like unless you were there. We had to wake 38,000 sleeping baby chickens and terrify and break them. In this barn, there were none of the restrictions of the first barn. We were told to pick up eight chickens at a time and to hold each one by one leg—four chickens in each hand. Chad told me that he could feel the chickens’ legs snap and pop when he handed them up to the loader on the truck. The chickens tried to huddle in groups, but occasionally, one would stray into the middle of the floor and get stepped on and kicked around. It broke my heart. I only worked a little while in this barn before I had to sit down because of the combination of exhaustion and emotional strain. I made eye contact with some of the young chickens, who were so little that they weren’t even clucking yet, just cheeping. It just killed me. They started huddling under me for safety when I knelt down. Some people think that chickens don’t have feelings, but it was perfectly clear how scared these animals were. It was absolute hell—there are no better words to describe that graphic scene. It was death. It was screaming babies with no one to help them. Worse, I knew that I was only seeing a very small percentage of the billions of chickens who are killed every year in the industry. I couldn’t do it anymore, so Chad and I both went and sat out for the last hour while the final truck was loaded. I cried the whole way home. I only made it half of one night, but the biggest shock came when I realized that the catchers do this every day and have been doing it for years—some of them for their entire working lives. The brutality that these people inflict on animals shocked me. Ever since that day, my boyfriend and I have sworn off meat. Most people don’t know what happens to animals in the meat industry, but now, you know that there is a fate worse then death for these chickens—their journey to slaughter.



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Ego 2NC

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Frontline

They have no offense – extinction is going to happen sooner or later, better to get it over with now, all at once, to prevent more humans from being born and suffering and grieving, as per our Benatar and Dolan evidence – here’s more:Lenman ‘02 (James, Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Sheffield University, “On Becoming Extinct”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly)

It is not only individuals who die. Species also die or die out. Today there are no longer any sabre-tooth tigers or Irish elk and, one day, certainly, there will be no human beings. Perhaps that is a bad thing but, if so, it is a bad thing we had better learn to live with. The Second Law of Thermodynamics will get us in the end in the fantastically unlikely event that nothing else does first. We might perhaps argue about whether and how much this inevitability should distress us but that it not my present purpose. Rather I want to ask whether, given that any given species will at some time disappear, it

is better that it disappear later rather than sooner. More particularly, given that it is inevitable that our own species will only endure for a finite time, does it matter how soon that end comes? We are naturally disposed to think it would be a bad thing were our extinction imminent. In popular movies like Armageddon, everyone is very unhappy with this prospect for an obvious and extremely understandable

reason – they are all going to die very soon. The trouble is that if we take a timeless and impersonal perspective, this might seem to be no big deal. For, on such a perspective, future people matter no less than do present people. And this fate is waiting for some generation or other.

Their attempt to eliminate suffering will always fail because it does not solve the root of the problem – life itself. Even if the Aff could reduce the amount of suffering in the world by 99 percent – you’d still vote for us. To allow even one person to suffer is to commit an unspeakable crime when the alternative of nirvana and transcendence is on the table. Preserving human life is ethically bankrupt if doing so makes us willfully ignore that there are people in this world whose lives are so horrible that if faced with the choice between being born and not being born they would choose to have never been born. There is no justification for continuing humanity’s absurd and tragic existence as long as the happiness of the few comes at the price of never-ending torture and misery for others. For this reason – to allow humanity to slip into sweet nonexistence by accepting their impacts as inevitable and desirable is the utmost ethical act and the only way to truly end humanity’s perpetual sorrow. Vote for us – it’s better to assume that if people had the choice they would prefer nonexistence to life in a finite world that makes one suffer.Cartwright, David E (08/2008). "Compassion and Solidarity with Sufferers: The Metaphysics of Mitleid". European journal of philosophy (0966-8373), 16 (2), p. 292.

William James sketched a thought experiment that he could not refrain from answering for us: [I]f the hypothesis were offered to us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris' utopias should be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edges of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a specificial and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us



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immediately feel, even though an impulse within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain? (James 1956: 188) The American pragmatist assumed that his readers would share the same 'specificial and independent sort of emotion' that would have led them to find hideous any enjoyment bought by such a bargain. He must have also thought that utilitarians would not read a pragmatist, since the purchase of a heaven-on-earth at the expense of a single individual is inestimably worth more than the cost. James also captured Arthur Schopenhauer's response to this hideous bargain. Schopenhauer advanced an analogous anti-utilitarian stance, and he drove it to a pessimistic conclusion: [T]hat thousands had lived in happiness and joy would never do away with the anguish and death-agony of one individual; and just a little does my present well-being undo my previous suffering. Therefore, were the evil in this world even a hundred times less than it is, its mere existence would still be sufficient to establish a truth that may be expressed in various ways, although only somewhat indirectly, namely that we have not to be pleased but sorry about the world; that its nonexistence would be preferable to its existence; that it is something that ought not to be, and so on. (WWR II 576/661)

The possibility of full human extinction changes nothing about our argument. The suffering of existence demands that we move towards total annihilation of all life on this planet sooner rather than later. Benatar ‘6 (David, Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Cape Town, Better Never to Have Been, Pg 194-195)

My arguments in this chapter and previous ones imply that it would be better if humans (and other species) became extinct. All things being equal, my arguments also suggest that it would be better if this occurred sooner rather than later. These conclusions are deeply unsettling to many people. I shall now assess that common response in order to determine whether the prospect of human extinction really is to be regretted, and whether it really would be better for it to occur sooner rather than later. The human species, like every other species, will eventually become extinct.5² Many people are disturbed by this prospect and take comfort only in the hope that it may still be a very long time until this occurs.5³ Others are not so sure that our species has a long future. In every generation there are the few who believe that ‘the end is nigh’. Often these views are the product of uninformed, often religiously inspired, eschatology, if not of mental disorder. Sometimes, however, they are not.54 There are those who believe that not only external threats, such as asteroid impact, but also current human practices , including non-sustainable consumption, environmental damage, new and recrudescent diseases, and nuclear or biological weapons , pose a serious threat to the long-term future of humanity. For others, the argument for more imminent extinction is not empirical but philosophical. Reasoning probabilistically, they argue that we are destined to ‘doom soon’.55 I shall not assess arguments and evidence for competing views about when human extinction will occur. We know it will occur, and this fact has a curious effect on my argument. In a strange way it makes my argument an optimistic one. Although things are now not the way they should be—there are people when there should be none—things will someday be the way they should be—there will be no people. In other words, although things are now bad, they will be better, even if they first



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get worse with the creation of new people. Some may wish to be spared this kind of optimism, but some optimists may take a measure of comfort in this observation.

We should begin pursuing extinction now. This requires either a sudden extinction level catastrophe or a steady decline in human population – the aff is an obstacle to both. Benatar ‘6 (David, Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Cape Town, Better Never to Have Been, pg 184)

Bringing people into existence always inflicts serious harm on those people. However, in some situations failing to bring people into existence can make the lives of existent people a lot worse than they would otherwise have been. That is cause for concern. However, we need to avoid a protracted regress in which more and more harm is done by the addition of successive new generations in order to prevent

extra harm to existing people. Thus, the creation of new generations could only possibly be acceptable, on my view, if it were aimed at phasing out people. Unless humanity ends suddenly, the final people whether they exist sooner or later, will likely suffer much.4¹ There is some sense in making sure that fewer people suffer this fate. This can be done by steadily reducing the number of people. I amunder no illusions. Although humans may voluntarily seek to reduce their number, they will never, under current circumstances, do so with the intention of

moving towards extinction. Thus, in considering the question of phased extinction from a large population base, I am not discussing what will ever happen but only what should happen or what it would be best to have happen. Put another way, I am discussing the theoretical implications and applications of my views.

No one suffers who does not exist, so the lack of existence is a plus from lack of suffering, but because no one suffers from the lack of joy there is no negative to it, whereas there is the negative from suffering that existence presents. So existence is at best neutral, while non existence is a positive.Benatar ’97 (David, Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Cape Town, “Why it is Better Never to Come into Existence.” In Life Death and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on Big Questions. Pg 28-32)

There is a common assumption in the literature about future possible people that, all things being equal, one does no wrong by bringing into existence people whose lives will be good on balance. This assumption rests on another—namely that being brought into existence (with decent life prospects) is a benefit (even though not being brought into existence is not a harm). I shall argue that the underlying assumption is erroneous. Being brought into existence is not a benefit but always a harm. When I say that coming into existence is always a harm, I do not mean that it is necessarily a harm. As will become apparent, my argument does not apply to those hypothetical cases in which a life contains only good and no bad. About such an existence I say that it is neither a harm nor a benefit and we should be indifferent between such an existence and never existing. But no lives are like this. All lives contain some bad. Coming into existence with such a life is always a harm. Many people will find this deeply unsettling claim to be counter-intuitive and will wish to dismiss it. For this reason, I propose not only to defend the claim, but also to suggest why people might be resistant to it. As a matter of fact, bad things happen to all of us. No life is without hardship. It is easy to think of the millions who live a life of poverty or of those who live much of their lives with some disability. Some of us are lucky enough to be spared these fates, but most of us who are, nonetheless suffer ill-health at some stage during our lives. Often the suffering is excruciating, even if it is in our final days. Some are condemned by nature to years of frailty. We all face death .²0 We infrequently contemplate the harms that await any new-born child—pain, disappointment, anxiety, grief, and death. For any given child we cannot predict what form these harms will take or how



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severe they will be, but we can be sure that at least some of them will occur.²¹ None of this befalls the non-existent. Only existers suffer harm . Optimists will be quick to note that I have not told the whole story. Not only bad things but also good things happen only to those who exist. Pleasure, joy, and satisfaction can only be had by existers. Thus, the cheerful will say, we must weigh up the pleasures of life against the evils. As long as the former outweigh the latter, the life is worth living. Coming into being with such a life is, on this view, a benefit. The asymmetry of pleasure and pain However, this conclusion does not follow. This is because there is a crucial difference between harms (such as pains) and benefits (such as pleasures) which entails that existence has no advantage over, but does have disadvantages relative to, non-existence.²² Consider pains and pleasures as exemplars of harms and benefits. It is uncontroversial to say that (1) the presence of pain is bad, and that (2) the presence of pleasure is good. However, such a symmetrical evaluation does not seem to apply to the absence of pain and pleasure, for it strikes me as true that (3) the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone, whereas (4) the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation. Now it might be asked how the absence of pain could be good if that good is not enjoyed by anybody. Absent pain, it might be said, cannot be good for anybody, if nobody exists for whom it can be good. This, however, is to dismiss (3) too quickly. The judgement made in (3) is made with reference to the (potential )interests of a person who either does or does not exist. To this it might be objected that because (3) is part of the scenario under which this person never exists, (3) cannot say anything about an existing person. This objection would be mistaken because (3) can say something about a counterfactual case in which a person who does actually exist never did exist. Of the pain of an existing person, (3) says that the absence of this pain would have been good even if this could only have been achieved by the absence of the person who now suffers it. In other words, judged in terms of the interests of a person who now exists, the absence of the pain would have been good even though this person would then not have existed. Consider next what (3) says of the absent pain of one who never exists—of pain, the absence of which is ensured by not making a potential person actual. Claim (3) says that this absence is good when judged in terms of the interests of the person who would otherwise have existed. We may not know who that person would have been, but we can still say that whoever that person would have been, the avoidance of his or her pains is good when judged in terms of his or her potential interests. If there is any (obviously loose) sense in which the absent pain is good for the person who could have existed but does not exist, this is it. Clearly (3) does not entail the absurd literal claim that there is some actual person for whom the absent pain is good.²³ In support of the asymmetry between (3) and (4), it can be shown that it has considerable explanatory power. It explains at least four other asymmetries that are quite plausible. Sceptics, when they see where this leads, may begin to question the plausibility of these other asymmetries and may want to know what support (beyond the asymmetry above) can be provided for them. Were I to provide such support, the sceptics would then ask for a defence of these further supporting considerations. Every argument must have some justificatory end. I cannot hope to convince those who take the rejection of my conclusion as axiomatic. All I can show is that those who accept some quite plausible views are led to my conclusion. These plausible views include four other asymmetries, which I shall now outline. First, the asymmetry between (3) and (4) is the best explanation for the view that while there is a duty to avoid bringing suffering people into existence, there is no duty to bring happy people into being. In other words, the reason why we think that there is a duty not to bring suffering people into existence is that the presence of this suffering would be bad (for the sufferers) and the absence of the suffering is good (even though there is nobody to enjoy the absence of suffering). In contrast to this, we think that there is no duty to bring happy people into existence because while their pleasure would be good for them, its absence would not be bad for them (given that there would be nobody who would be deprived of it).



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Surrender Key



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Transcendence

Permanent release from suffering is only possible through death. Only by divorcing ourselves from concern about what happens in corporeal existence and denying our Will can allow us to awake from the nightmare of life and discover the true transcendent self. Young, Julian (08/08/2008). "Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Death and Salvation". European journal of philosophy (0966-8373), 16 (2), p. 311.

Mindful of Schopenhauer's Buddhist affinities, one might venture a summary of the four-booked World as Will and Representation by means of four 'noble truths': the world is my representation; its essence is will, that is to say, suffering; temporary release from suffering is possible through art; permanent release is possible through 'denial of the will', that is to say, death. Since the appearance of death in the fourth 'noble truth' may cause some surprise, let me begin by justifying its introduction. Pierre Hadot1 has helped us remember that at its inception, philosophy had not theoretical knowledge but practical wisdom as its ultimate goal and justification, the wisdom of how to live a happy life in an uncertain world. Ancient philosophy was philo-sophia, not philo-theoria. It is to this original understanding of the enterprise that Schopenhauer returns2 when he writes that it is the chief task of philosophy, as it is of religion, to provide a 'consolation' in the face of death. This, he says, is why Socrates was right to define philosophy as a 'preparation for death'.3 To this definition of the task he adds a further specification: since death conceived as entry into a 'dark' and empty 'nothing', 4 as absolute annihilation, is, for human beings, the summum malum, our worst fear, any effective consolation must satisfy the 'metaphysical need'; 5 the need to be assured of 'the indestructibility of our true nature' by death. 6 Schopenhauer satisfies his own meta-philosophical requirement7 by appeal to the idealism announced in the first of his 'noble truths'. Idealism is, he says, the 'most complete answer'8 to the question of immortality, guaranteeing, as it does, the 'indestructibility' of our true self. For according to idealism, life and the world are, ultimately speaking, a 'dream'. But a dream requires a dreamer who is not part of the dream, a transcendent subject. It follows that death is no more than the end of the dream (or nightmare), that our real self is untouched by it. Of course most of the time we use that 'equivocal' word 'I'9 to refer to our ordinary, everyday, embodied egos. But the metaphysical insight—and ensuing practical wisdom—that Schopenhauer's philosophy is intended to help us achieve leads us to see that the true 'I' is the transcendent self, the self that lies beyond the dream, beyond time, and so beyond both birth and death. Of course, eternal existence is not by itself sufficient to satisfy the 'metaphysical need'. It is further required of any religion or any philosophy capable of healing the wound of mortality, of offering a genuine 'antidote' 10 to death, that it should display one's post-death existence as, in some way or other, blissful: it must represent it as genuine—in Schopenhauer's word—'salvation'. Only thus can it solve the tormenting 'riddle' 11 of life, provide an account of the totality of our existence that will compensate for the miserable character of its terrestrial portion and so reconcile us to that totality.



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The Will

The Will to Live makes pain the normal state of existence. The correct response to the suffering of the world is not to embrace the Will but rather surrender our bodies to this hell so our spirit may experience the truly sublime.Wurth 02

(Kiene Brillenburg, THE MUSICALLY SUBLIME INFINITY, INDETERMINACY, IRRESOLVABILITY; (Un)forgetfulness, Dissertation for RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN , http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/FILES/faculties/arts/2002/c.a.w.brillenburg.wurth/c5.pdf)

The Will is thus the ‘fundamental reality’, the ‘inner essence’ of the world. This is, however, not a very kind or appealing essence: neither cause nor effect, neither spatial nor temporal, the Will is presented by Schopenhauer “as an irrational , aimless, and violent struggle ” (de Mul 1999: 124). As such, as an all-pervasive, uncontrollable, and unstoppable force, the Will grounds phenomenal reality, objectifying itself in the finite appearances of nature – including human nature. Thus, Schopenhauer argues in Book Two, all my bodily actions are will objectified in time, i.e. in the phenomenal aspect of my body: “The action of the body is nothing but the act of the Will objectified, i.e., passed into intuition [Anschauung]… this is true of every movement of the body, not merely those which follow upon motives, but also involuntary movements which follow up on mere stimuli [Reize]” (Schopenhauer 1986: I, bk. 2, §18, 158). Indeed, if every act of the body is thus an act of the Will made perceivable, then even the body itself is nothing but the Will made physical within the conditions of time and space: every individual act, and likewise also its condition, (that is, the whole body itself which accomplishes it, and consequently also the process through which and in which the body exists) are nothing but the manifestation of the Will, the becoming visible, the objectification of the Will. This is the basis for the perfect conformity overall of the human and animal body to the human and animal Will, a conformity resembling, though far surpassing, that between a purpose-made tool and the will of its maker… (ibid.: I, bk. 2, §20, 168) As an unconscious force of productivity, the basic principle of the Will is desire, realizing its visible expressions in the various parts of the human body: “Teeth, throat, and intestines are objectified hunger; the genitals are objectified sexual desire; the grasping hands, the swift feet, correspond to the strivings of the Will which they present at a grade later and more indirect” (ibid.: 168). This desire is life’s ruling principle and it basically makes up the subject, determined by the Will that grounds and motivates it, as a mere subject of willing. In this way, says Schopenhauer, the subject is also primarily dominated by pain. Desire, yearning and striving, is pain, and the tragic fact is that in life only this pain is given to us directly (ibid.: I, bk. 4, §58, 438). Why would this be so? Because “the basis of all willing is need, deficiency – in short, pain”, and willing, the Will to life, is the (unconscious) motivation of life itself (ibid.: I, bk. 4, §57, 430). This ultimately means that pain is not the absence of pleasure, but that pleasure is a mere momentary deliverance from pain: “gratification is always really and essentially only negative, and never positive” (ibid.: I, bk. 4, §58, 438). The obvious implication here is that pain or want is a constant, and pleasure or gratification only intermittent or incidental. In the final analysis life is suffering, not happiness. Indeed, it is a suffering without end: the gratification, or the sense of receiving favour, can never be more than the deliverance from pain, from distress; for such is not only all actual, obvious suffering, but also every desire that importunately disturbs our peace, and, indeed, the deadening boredom, too, that



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makes life a burden to us. But it is so hard to attain or accomplish anything; endless difficulties and efforts stand in the way of every undertaking, and at every step obstacles accumulate. But when finally everything is overcome and attained, nothing can ever be gained but deliverance from some suffering or desire, so that we find ourselves just as we were before its onslaught. (ibid.: 438) All gratification “cannot be a lasting satisfaction” but only a temporary one “which must be followed either by a new pain, or by languor, empty Sehnen, and boredom” (ibid.: 439). With not too much difficulty, one can see here Burke, Usher, and Goethe united. Like Burke, Schopenhauer points to the pleasures of labour and exertion, temporarily combating the encumbrance of boredom or ennui, in surmounting accumulating obstacles: life for him appears to have a high and constant difficulty-degree. Like Usher, however, Schopenhauer also emphasizes the essentially futile nature of pleasures thus won: after it, suffering starts anew, either in the form of desire renewed or of languor returned. The subject continuously oscillates between pain and pleasure, the latter never being able to remove the former but instead constantly re-invoking it. Her or his fate, Schopenhauer writes in more or less Usherian manner, is perpetual unrest: “as long as our consciousness is filled by our Will, as long as we are surrendered to the prompting of desires with their constant hopes and fears, as long as we are the subject of willing, we can never have lasting peace or happiness” (ibid.: I, bk. 3, §38, 280). Thus it is, that much like Goethe’s Werther, Schopenhauer’s subject of willing always finds itself as it was before, just as poor and miserable, after having reached for the moon. And thus it is, that since “there is no final end or goal in striving, there is no due portion, no purpose in suffering” (ibid.: I, bk. 4, §56, 425). Having said this, the impossibility of pleasure to (fully and finally) remove pain could well confirm the impossibility of what I have identified as the moment of closure in Kant’s normative model of sublime experience: the successful and final sublimation of pain (fear, frustration) into pleasure (delight, self-confirmation). In fact, while Schopenhauer’s gloomy account of aimless striving and suffering reinforces the deceptive nature of any such closure, it even informs us of what will happen after: either a repetition of the tension it is supposed to have concluded, or…nothing, emptiness, boredom. Transposing this problem to the realm of epic narrative, Schopenhauer writes that such a narrative conducts its hero through a thousand difficulties and dangers to his destination; as soon as it is reached, poetry swiftly lets the curtain fall; for now there would be nothing left for it to do but to show that the glittering goal in which the hero imagined he would find happiness had only teased him, too, and that after attaining it, he was no better off than before. (ibid.: I, bk. 4, §58, 439) So, I would say, Kant swiftly lets the curtain fall when the Kantian subject, having recognized its supersensible destination, appears to have surmounted the frustrations of its sensible being. Indeed, I wonder, what would happen after? Does the subject recognize its supersensible vocation as unattainable, is it no better off than before, infinitely striving for its freedom from and superiority over nature? Or does it remain locked within its final closure-in-transcendence, experiencing the boredom of a bodiless idyll without frustration or fear? True, if Schopenhauer thus, without being aware of it, questions the viability of Kant’s triumph over pain, then he himself nevertheless likewise conceives of the sublime in terms of sublimation. Thus, he claims, sublime experience involves a subjective transition from the subject of willing (the subject tied to the determinations of the Will, which can be roughly interpreted as Kant’s being of nature), to the subject of knowledge (the subject freed from the determinations of the Will, which can be roughly interpreted as Kant’s transcendental subject as rational being); from a desiring, irrational animal creature to a spirit that dwells in pure, disinterested perception. If the subject encounters objects so mighty and dreadful that they oppose the Will objectified, i.e. the human body, if, in their overwhelming and irresistible power, they threaten it, or, if in the face of their immeasurable greatness they reduce it to nothingness; [yet] if, in spite of this, the beholder does not direct his attention to this imminently hostile attitude to his Will, but , although aware of it and recognizing it, turns consciously away from it , forcibly detaches himself from his Will and its relations, and, surrendering to perception calmly, as pure Will-less subject of knowledge contemplates those very objects that are so terrifying to the Will [made physical as human body], comprehends only their Idea [in the Platonic sense of the term] which is alien to all



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relation, so that he lingers pleasurably over it, and is thereby raised above himself, his person, his willing, and all willing – then he is filled with the sense of the sublime… (ibid.: I, bk. 3, §39, 287)

The only way to enter a state of pure will-lessness is to completely resign ourselves to fate – only by accepting extinction allows us to be freeReginster, Bernard (08/08/2008). "Knowledge and Selflessness: Schopenhauer and the Paradox of Reflection". European journal of philosophy (0966-8373), 16 (2), p. 251.

We are not usually distressed at evils that are inescapably necessary and quite universal, for example, the necessity of old age and

death, and of many daily inconveniences. It is rather a consideration of the accidental nature of the circumstances that have brought suffering precisely on us which gives this suffering its sting. Now we have recognized that pain as such is inevitable and essential to life …. If such a reflection were to become a living conviction, it might produce a considerable degree of stoical equanimity, and greatly reduce our anxious concern about our own welfare. But such a powerful control of the faculty of reason over directly felt suffering is seldom or never found in fact. (WWR I, 315; cf. 379, 397) The recognition that the frustration of the will, which is the source of pain, is 'inevitable and essential', is supposed to 'produce a considerable degree of stoical equanimity, and greatly reduce our anxious concern about our

own welfare'. The knowledge that its frustration is unavoidable affects our will by inducing in us a degree of indifference to whether or not it gets satisfied. In this case, knowledge appears to affect the will by motivating an act of rational control, in which the agent, recognizing the impossibility of satisfying his will, deliberately prepares himself to endure its frustration (for example, by marshalling the necessary psychological defenses), or attempts to renounce its satisfaction altogether. However, Schopenhauer does not appear to endorse this strategy of rational control, partly because he doubts its effectiveness, but also because the 'stoical indifference' such rational control expresses differs from the 'complete resignation' he ends up advocating in two other respects. First, stoical indifference (an expression Schopenhauer appears to use in its colloquial, rather than strictly philosophical, sense) may designate the fortitude

to weather frustration, or the capacity to endure it, whereas complete resignation is a condition in which there no longer is frustration to weather or endure. Second, stoical indifference is presented here as a deliberate, rationally motivated renunciation: it is as though we first learn of the inevitability of frustration and then conclude from this that we should prepare ourselves for it, perhaps by renouncing the will thus doomed to be frustrated. As Schopenhauer describes it, by contrast, complete resignation, 'that denial of willing, that entrance into freedom, is not to be forcibly arrived at by intention or design, but comes from the innermost relation of knowing and willing in man; hence it comes suddenly as if flying in from without [wie von aussen angeflogen]' (WWR I 404). How, then, does this complete resignation come about? It is important, in the first place, to distinguish between complete resignation and what we may call ordinary resignation. Ordinarily, to be resigned does not mean that I cease to desire a certain object, but only that I accept that it is out of my reach and therefore

renounce its pursuit. Complete resignation, by contrast, requires not only that I renounce pursuing a desire, but also that I become indifferent to whether or not it is satisfied, and this amounts to renouncing the desire itself. For after all, to have a desire is precisely not to be indifferent to whether or not it will be satisfied. This crucial feature of complete resignation is apparent in Schopehnauer's characterization of it as a state of 'will-lessness'.

We live in the worst of all possible worlds – not only do the horrors inflicted out of cruelty by the human will rival that of hell, but the idea that this existence is the best possible one is rendered ridiculous by the fact that physical life has barely given us the necessary conditions for survival.Sanderson ‘07 (Matthew Walter, PhD dissertation Southern Illinois University, “RELIGIOUS SUBLIMITY AND THE TRAGIC VIEW OF LIFE IN KANT, SCHOPENHAUER AND NIETZSCHE,” August, ProQuest)

However, as we saw in the first chapter, the will for Schopenhauer and Nietzsche is not a protective Heavenly Father or omni-benevolent divinity. On the contrary, it is closer to a demonic force, for it is the cause of all the death and suffering in the world. A close look at this existence, according to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, does not inspire in one the feeling



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that life is beautiful, or that this is the best of all possible worlds. In fact, far from conceiving existence as heavenly, Schopenhauer insists that it is best characterized as a hell, as, indeed, the worst and only hell. Thus, Schopenhauer asks, “For whence did Dante get the material for his hell, if not from this actual world of ours?” (WWR I, 325). Schopenhauer even understands his own philosophical project as consisting, in part, in demonstrating that hell is present here on earth, not in an afterlife. As Schopenhauer writes: “[I]nstead of inventing a future hell as the equivalent of sins, I have shown that….there is already in the world something akin to hell” (WWR II, 581). Schopenhauer believes, for instance, that the Christian notion of Hell is a very apt metaphor for this life given the cruel ways in which humans behave towards one another. “[T]he world is Hell,” he writes, “and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other hand the devils in it” (EA, 48). Furthermore, Schopenhauer points out that such human cruelty must at least rival if not exceed what actual devils are capable of: “Only consider,” he remarks, “what men sometimes inflict upon men, with what ingenious torments one will slowly torture another to death, and ask yourself whether devils could do more” (EA, 186). Of course, human cruelty is only one (albeit a very central) dimension of the hellish character of existence. But Schopenhauer no doubt focuses on this dimension because it consists of the evil actions that supposedly, from a traditional religious perspective, merit punishment in hell. Schopenhauer’s point is that if the hell of the after-life is supposed to mirror this life and contain the worst among us, then we already live in hell. To prove rationally that existence is best understood as a hell Schopenhauer famously offers the argument that this world is the worst, rather than the best, of all possible worlds. He writes: [A]gainst the palpably sophistical proofs of Leibniz that this is the best of all possible worlds, we may even oppose seriously and honestly the proof that it is the worst of all possible worlds. For possible means not what we may picture in our imagination, but what can actually exist and last. Now this world is arranged as it had to be if it were to be capable of continuing with great difficulty to exist; if it were a little worse, it would be no longer capable of continuing to exist. Consequently, since a worse world could not continue to exist, it is absolutely impossible; and so this world itself is the worst of all possible worlds (WWR II, 583). To understand this passage we must grasp what Schopenhauer means by “a little worse.” He explains that a slight change in atmosphere or climate, or a large natural disaster, is enough to radically alter the earth and render it uninhabitable. Furthermore, each organism was given just the right amount of parts with no extra to spare; as Schopenhauer writes, “throughout [nature]…the conditions are sparingly and scantily given, and nothing beyond these” (WWR II, 584). Nature, in other words, as many philosophers including Hobbes, Hume and Adam Smith have noted, is stingy or ‘niggardly;’ there is, in short, a profound scarcity of resources for the earth, populations, and individuals to survive on. One relatively minor injury to the earth’s climate or to an individual life-form is enough to ruin it entirely. This is evidence, on both the local and global levels, that life was not arranged to accommodate or adapt to changes such as global warming or even something as small as a diseased heart. Life on earth then is just barely capable of continuing to exist “with great difficulty,” and would cease to exist if made only “a little worse,” if, for instance, the global temperature were to increase by just 25 degrees overall. Thus, even if this argument does not establish that our world is the worst possible, it does prove that there are good reasons for not regarding especially nature as the creation of a benevolent and omnipotent God. Schopenhauer concludes, then, that we must think of this world not as the beatific creation of a benevolent deity but rather as the creation of a malevolent demon who delights in torturing its creatures. This sadistic devil is the blind and insatiable will, and thus David Berman, for instance, argues that one way to understand Schopenhauer’s world-view is to imagine “a world dominated not by God but by the Devil. Yet while this picture brings out the hellishness of the will and the world, it attributes too much intelligence and design to the will. It is not the case for Schopenhauer that the will devises or plans to produce this worst of all possible worlds, because since the will is blind it has not intent, evil or otherwise. The will’s essence, according to Schopenhauer, is simply the insatiable striving for life and more life, through nourishment and procreation. Hence a truer picture, I suggest, is to imagine the world dominated by an omnipotent animal of insatiable hunger and lust for life. This willful, omnipotent animal would feed mercilessly on everything around it,



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making the world a hell, not because it is evil or immoral, but because that is its nature, that is what happens if the world is governed by hunger and lust for life.”97 However, though Schopenhauer does not attribute conscious intentions to the will, and even insists that it is improper to understand the timeless will as a creator (for this presupposes a time before and after the noumenal will’s creation), his conception of the will as demonic basically amounts to a notion of what religious systems call ‘natural evil,’ or the tragedies caused by natural forces such as disease, famine and so-called “natural disasters.”



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Death doesn’t exist



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ImmortalityLife can’t be destroyed. Our perception of death is merely severing the connection between the physical body and the energy in the multiverse. Energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed. When the body dies, our consciousness remains outside of time.

Lanza 2010 (Robert Lanza is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is currently Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. "Does Death Exist?: Life Is Forever, Says Theory" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-death-exist-life-is_b_410306.html)

In the cartoon, Bugs Bunny swallows nitroglycerine and gunpowder, and springs back to life even when he gets flattened by a boulder. But it's not just Bugs. Experiments suggest that life can't be destroyed either . As discussed in Part I, the 'many-worlds' interpretation of quantum physics states that there are an infinite number of universes (the 'multiverse'). Everything that can possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death doesn't exist in any real sense in these scenarios since all of them exist simultaneously regardless of what happens in any of them. The 'Who am I?' feeling is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain . But this energy doesn't go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can't be created or destroyed. Scientists think they can say where life begins and ends. We generally reject the multiple universes of Star Trek as fiction, but it turns out there is more than a morsel of scientific truth in this popular genre. According to Biocentrism, space and time aren't the hard objects we think, but rather tools our mind uses to put everything together. When bodies die, they do so not in the random billiard-ball matrix but in the inescapable-life matrix . Consider all the days that have passed since the beginning of time. Now stack them like chairs, and seat yourself on the very top. Isn't it amazing that you just happen to be here now, perched seemingly by chance on the cutting edge of infinity? Science claims it's a big accident, a one-in-a-gazillion chance. But the mathematical possibility of being on top of infinity -- of your consciousness ending -- is zero. Imagine existence like a record ing. Depending on where the needle is placed you hear a certain song. This is the present; the music, before and after is the past and future. Likewise, every moment endures always . All songs exist simultaneously, although we only experience them piece by piece.

Immortality exists—Physicists and Scientists agreeZammit ‘3 (Victor, ba, ma, phd former solicitor of the sc of new south wales and the court of australia, January 22, http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=50)

From the late nineteenth century until to-day there have been groups of prominent, well-respected scientists - many of them the best-known names in science - who have worked to prove that immortality is a natural physical phenomenon and its study is a branch of physics. Many of these scientists were highly practical people whose discoveries in other areas fundamentally changed the way people work and live. Many considered themselves to be Rationalists and Humanists and have had to face intense opposition from both traditional Christian clergy and from materialist scientists who joined together to try to suppress their findings. One of the pioneers in this tradition was Emmanuel Swedenborg; who was born in Sweden in 1688. One of the leading scientists of his day, he wrote 150 works in seventeen sciences. At the University of Uppsala he studied Greek,


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-death-exist-life-is_b_410306.html


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Latin, several European and Oriental languages, geology, metallurgy, astronomy, mathematics, economics. He was an intensely practical man who invented the glider, the submarine and an ear trumpet for the deaf. He was held in high esteem by all, was a Member of parliament and held important Government posts in mining. He always showed he had enormously high intelligence and maintained a keen practical mind until his death. Swedenborg was also a very highly gifted clairvoyant who spent more than twenty years investigating other dimensions. As he himself said: “I have been allowed to talk with practically everyone I have ever known during this physical life- with some for hours, with some for weeks or months, with some for years - all for the overriding purpose that I might be assured of this fact, (that life

continues after death) and might bear witness to it.” Interestingly he put forward a view of the universe which is remarkably similar to twentieth century quantum physics. At a time when Newton was arguing that matter was composed of impenetrable atoms which were given motion by outside forces, Swendenborg taught that it was made up of a series of particles in ascending order of size, each of which was composed of a closed vortex of energy which spiralled at infinite speeds to give the appearance of solidity. In England one of the founders of the Society for Psychic Research (SPR) was Sir William

Crookes, a Fellow of the Royal Society and later its President. The discoverer of six chemical elements including Thallium, he was considered to be the greatest scientist of his time. He worked extensively investigating levitation phenomena which was associated with the medium D.D. Home. Conclusive photographs were a part of this record and the authenticity of the appearances, as well as the total absence of fraud and trickery were verified by a number of other leading scientists of the day including Cromwell F. Varley, an early researcher into ionisation and supervisor of the initial laying of the Atlantic Cable. He was finally convinced of the reality of the afterlife by a series of remarkable full materialisations of his wife. Also in his group were scientists Lord Balfour, Sir William Barrett, Sir Oliver Lodge and Lord Raleigh J Thompson who discovered the electron and Alfred Russell Wallace who propounded the theory of evolution at the same time as and independently of Charles Darwin. Thomas Alva Edison, the American inventor of the phonograph and the first electric light bulb was a spiritualist who experimented with mechanical means of contacting the 'dead' (Scientific American, 30/10/1920). John Logie Baird, television pioneer and inventor of the infra-red camera, contacted the 'deceased' Thomas A. Edison through a medium and later stated: ‘I have witnessed some very startling phenomena under circumstances which make trickery out of the question’ ( Logie Baird 1988: 68-69).

Another twentieth century investigator was Dr Glen Hamilton, a physician and member of the Canadian Parliament. In his laboratory under strictly controlled conditions he had a battery of fourteen electronically controlled flash cameras which photographed apparitions simultaneously from all angles. Observers present at his experiments included four other medical doctors, two lawyers, and both an electrical and civil engineer. Each of the witnesses stated strongly and unequivocally that ‘time after time, I saw dead persons materialise.’ (Hamilton 1977). Yet another brilliant scientist and inventor who after investigating became totally convinced of the existence of the afterlife was George Meek. At the age of 60 George Meek retired from his career as an inventor, designer and manufacturer of devices for air conditioning and treatment of waste water. He held scores of industrial patents which enabled him to live comfortably and devote the next twenty five years of his life to self-funded full-time research into life after death. Meek undertook an extensive library and literature research program and travelled the world to locate and establish research projects with the top medical

doctors, psychiatrists, physicists, biochemists, psychics, healers, parapsychologists, hypnotherapists, ministers, priests and rabbis. He established the Metascience Foundation in Franklin North Carolina which sponsored the famous Spiricom research which succeeded in establishing extended two-way instrumental contact between people alive and people living in the afterlife. His most recent book: After We Die What Then(1987)outlines the conclusions of his years of full-time research- that we do all survive and that in the last twenty-five years mankind has learned more about what happens when we die than was learned in all earlier periods of recorded history (Meek 1987:4).

The burden of proof is on them—science indicates there life after death.Zammit ‘3 (Victor, ba, ma, phd former solicitor of the sc of new south wales and the court of australia, January 22, http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=50)



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In England today a group of scientists, mathematicians and university professors are working to make known the results of experiments on sub-atomic particles and mathematical calculations which provide a scientific explanation for so-called psychic phenomena. Professor Abdus Salam, a Nobel Laureate and director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, has given financial backing and grants to this group. Central to its claims is the work of Ron Pearson, a former university lecturer in Intelligence Behind the Universe (1990) mathematically confirms the experiments of Crookes, Hamilton and other researchers. Sam Nichols, an astrophysicist from Leeds University, supports Pearson's calculations and claims that so-called 'deceased' entities although composed of slightly different atomic components, exist in and share the same space with the material world. This is possible because most of what we consider to be solid matter is in fact empty space. Modern physics now teaches that atoms are 99.99999% empty space- the distance between an electron and its nucleus being as great proportionally as the distance from the earth to the sun . And even electrons, protons and neutrons, the particles which make up atoms, are now thought to be energy rather than matter. Astrophysicist Michael Scott of Edinburgh University argues that: ‘the advancement of quantum physics has produced a description of reality which allows the existence of parallel universes. Composed of real substances they could would not interact with matter from our own universe.’ Professo r Fred Alan Wolf seems to concur with these findings in his book Mind and the New Physician which he states: ‘as fantastic as it sounds, the new physics called quantum mechanics posits that there exists, side by side with this world, another world, a parallel universe, a duplicate copy that is somehow slightly different yet the same. And not just two parallel worlds, but three, four or even more …! I n each of these universes, you, I and all the others who live, have lived, will live, and will ever have lived, are alive!’ Michael Roll has taken these findings and published them in a booklet, ‘The Physicists’ and Rationalists' case for Survival After the Death of our Physical Bodies’ in which he argues that dying is as natural as being born and that we all pass on to the next world where there are no special places reserved for any special religious group (Roll 1996). The evidence from many scientists that the afterlife exists is overwhelming. But as stated above, there is NOT one scientist who has proved that the afterlife does not exist.

L inearity experiments also prove consciousness is immortalLanza, ‘09 (Robert Lanza is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is currently Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. "Does Death Exist? New Theory Says 'No'", http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-death-exist-new-theo_b_384515.html)

Consider an experiment that was recently published in the journal Science showing that scientists could retroactively change something that had happened in the past. Particles had to decide how to behave when they hit a beam splitter. Later on, the experimenter could turn a second switch on or off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle did in the past Regardless of the choice you, the observer, make, it is you who will experience the outcomes that will result. The linkages

between these various histories and universes transcend our ordinary classical ideas of space and time. Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply holo-projecting either this or that result onto a screen. Whether you turn the second beam splitter on or off, it's still the same battery or agent responsible for the projection. According to Biocentrism, space and time are not the hard objects we think. Wave your hand through the air - if you take everything away, what's left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. You can't see anything through the bone that surrounds your

brain. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the




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tools for putting everything together. Death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world. In the end, even Einstein admitted, "Now Besso" (an old

friend) "has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us...know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Immortality doesn't mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather

resides outside of time altogether.



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Afterlife

Life after death exists—Multiple WarrantsMedical literatureZammit ‘3 (Victor, ba, ma, phd former solicitor of the sc of new south wales and the court of australia, January 22, http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=50)

Some of the leaders in the scientific research of life after death are extremely intelligent and astute medical doctors who

began their investigation as sceptics. Dr Elisabeth Kubler-Ross who has had global impact on the way that dying people are treated came to be totally convinced of life after death from her close association with thousands of dying patients. As she put it: “Up until then I had absolutely no belief in an

afterlife, but the data convinced me that these were not coincidences or hallucinations” (Kubler-Ross 1997:188). Dr Melvin Morse, a

paediatrician and a recognised world leading authority on dying children was, as he put it, ‘an arrogant critical-care physician’ with ‘an emotional bias

against anything spiritual’ before his scientifically based studies of dying children and his extensive study of the literature led him to 'the inescapable conclusion that ‘there is a divine ‘something’ which serves as a glue for the universe’. He writes:

“When I review the medical literature, I think it points directly to evidence that some aspect of human consciousness survives death. Other researchers agree with me. Physician Michael Schroter-Kunhardt, for instance, conducted a comprehensive review of the scientific literature and concluded that the paranormal capacities of the dying person suggest the existence of a time-and-space transcending immortal soul. Other researchers have reached the same conclusion. Be it through case studies of their own or research they have reviewed, there is in the scientific community a growing belief in the human spirit.” (Morse 1984:190).

Near death experiencesChopra ‘7 (Deepak, m.d. chairman and co-founder of the chopra center for wellbeing, Life After Death: The Burden of Proof, p. 37)

Vedanta`s assertion that the soul is always near brings us face to face with the fascinating phenomenon of` near-death experiences, which have become a fixed part of popular belief (In a l99l Gallup poll, l5 million Americans, roughly 5% of the population, reported that they had had such an experience.) Near—death is a momentary brush with another reality, or so it seems to those who report the experience. A person is lying in the emergency room or intensive care unit. His Heart stops, and for all intents and purposes death ensues. Yet most of those these patients, typically those who suffered cardiac arrest, can be resuscitated. W/hen they are, nearly 20% report at least one of the familiar symptoms of NDE (as near—death experience is abbreviated in the medical literature)—leaving their bodies, looking down and seeing themselves on the operating table, watching medical procedures being performed as doctors tried to restart their hearts, finding themselves in a tunnel, going toward a bright light, feeling the presence of a higher power, hearing or seeing loved ones beckoning them on. Dr. Pim van Lommel, the cardiologist who conducted a major Dutch study on this subject, was astonished by the finding that patients were having a full-blown NDE after their brains had ceased any activity—they were flatline until revived. Suddenly death becomes robed in the trappings of a miracle. How can a person experience any event after the brain`s clock has stopped? Other cultures, however, have ventured even further into the timeless, and they assure us that time may end, but consciousness continues.



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Cultural StudiesChopra ‘7 (Deepak, m.d. chairman and co-founder of the chopra center for wellbeing, Life After Death: The Burden of Proof, p. 42)

If different cultures see different things after death, we must face the possibility that we create our own afterlife. Perhaps the vivid images that appear to dying people are projections, the soul’s way of helping us adjust to leaving behind the five senses. I accept that the afterlife is created in consciousness. But as a noted biologist told me with a sign recently, “The minute you begin to use that word ‘consciousness,’ you are immediately shut out of science.” I can pick up a recent Time magazine to read the following from Professor Eric Cornell, a Nobel Prize winner in physics: “Science isn’t about knowing the mind of God; it’s about understanding nature and the reasons for things. The thrill is that our ignorance exceeds our knowledge.

D) Schmidt and Jan experimentsChopra ‘7

(Deepak, m.d. chairman and co-founder of the chopra center for wellbeing, Life After Death: The Burden of Proof, p. 202-204)

What if our minds could alter the quantum field? Then we would have a link between the two models, mind and matter. Such a link was actually provided by Helmut Schmidt, a researcher working for the Boeing aerospace laboratory in Seattle. Beginning in the mid-Sixties, Schmidt set up machines that could emit random signals, with the aim of seeing if ordinary people could alter those signals using nothing more than their minds. The first machine detected radioactive decay from strontium 90; each electron that was given off lit up either a red, blue, yellow, or green light. Schmidt asked ordinary people to predict, with the press of a button, which light would be illuminated next. At first no one performed better than random, or 25%, in picking one of the four lights. Then Schmidt hit on the idea of using expert psychics as his subjects, and his first results were encouraging: psychics guessed the correct light 27% of the time. But he didn’t know if this was a matter of clairvoyance—seeing the result before it happened—or something more active, actually changing the random pattern of electrons being emitted. So Schmidt built a second machine that generated only two signals, call them plus and minus. A circle of lights was set up. and each time a plus or a minus was generated, a bulb would light up. If two pulses were generated consecutively, the lights would go on in a clockwise direction. Two minuses would light up in a counterclockwise direction, Left to itself, the machine would light up an equal number of pluses and minuses; what Schmidt wanted his subjects to do was to will the lights to move clockwise only. He eventually found two subjects who had remarkable success. One could get the lights to move clockwise 52.5% of the time, An increase of 2.59% over randomness doesn`t sound dramatic, but Schmidt calculated that the odds were 10 million to 1 against this occurring by chance. The other subject was just as successful, but oddly enough, his efforts to make the lights move clockwise had the opposite result: they moved only counterclockwise. Later experiments with new subjects raised the success rate to 54%, although the strange anomaly that the lights would sometimes go in the wrong direction persisted. (No



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explanation was ever found For this.) Schmidt showed that an observer can change activity in the quantum field using the mind alone, which supports the case that at some deep level mind and matter are one, The rishis` assertion that we are embedded in the Akashic held seems more credible, which also makes it more credible that we do not leave the held when we die; if we did, we would be the only thing in Nature that isn`t part of the field. Inspired by Schmidt`s results, a Princeton engineering professor named Robert Jahn developed much more sophisticated trials, involving a machine that could generate zeros and ones live times a second. In the Princeton experiments, each participant went through three types of tests. First he would will the machine to produce more ones than zeros, then more zeros than ones, and finally he would try not to in influence the machine at all. Each test was repeated until there were between 500,000 and 1 million results, a staggering number that in a single day outstripped all the previous trials performed by Schmidt and all the other parapsychologists before him. After twelve years of study, it was round that roughly two-thirds of ordinary people could influence the outcome of the machine, unlike in Schmidt's study. These ordinary people, like his psychics, could will material changes, evoking more zeros than ones, more ones than zeros, about 1 to 2% of the time. This again may seem like a slim margin, but it turns out to defy chance by a ratio of- a trillion to one. The solidity of the outcome is particularly radical because random chance is a bedrock of quantum physics, Darwinian evolution, and many other fields. (A dozen related follow-up studies also came up with results in the 51-52% range.)

Quantum physics Lanza 2009 (Robert Lanza is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is currently Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. "Does Death Exist? New Theory Says 'No'", http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-death-exist-new-theo_b_384515.html)

Many of us fear death. We believe in death because we have been told we will die. We associate ourselves with the body, and we know that bodies die. But a new scientific theory suggests that death is not the terminal event we think. One well-known aspect of quantum physics is that certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the "many-worlds" interpretation, states that

each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the 'multiverse'). A new scientific theory - called

biocentrism - refines these ideas. There are an infinite number of universes, and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling - the 'Who am I?'- is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn't go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. But does this energy transcend from one world to the other?




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Consciousness



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Life is Consciousness

Current science disproves Cartesian dualism and organic materialism i.e. the idea that there is the world outside our body and then the world inside our mind which is contained in our body. Rather, consciousness escapes the destruction of the body and mind—call for this evidence its warranted and definitive on the issue.Lanza, – Robert Lanza. MD, is considered one of the leading cell scientists in the world. He is currently Chief Scientific

Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and Berman 2k9 Bob Berman is an author and the most widely read astronomer in the world, he is director of the Storm King Observatory in Cornwall, New York, and of the Overlook Observatory in Woodstock, New York, he is an adjunct professor of astronomy at Marymount Manhattan College. Biocentrism. 2009. p. 33-37 [m leap]

Many of the later chapters will use discussions of space and time, and especially quantum theory, to help make the case for biocentrism. First, however, simple logic must be used to answer a most basic question: where is the universe located? It is here that we will need to deviate from conventional thinking and shared assumptions, some of which are inherent in language itself. All of us are taught since earliest childhood that the universe can be fundamentally divided into two entities—ourselves and that which is outside of us. This seems logical and apparent. What is me is commonly defined by what I can control. I can move my fingers largely on manipulation. The dividing line between self and nonself is generally taken to be the skin, strongly implying that I am this body and nothing else. Of course when a chunk of the body has vanished, as some unfortunate double amputees have experienced, one still feels one-self to be just as “present” and “here” as before, and not subjectively diminished in the least. This logic could be carried forth easily enough until one arrives at solely the brain itself perceiving itself as 'me” —because if a human head could be maintained with an artificial heart and the rest, it too would reply “Here!” if its name were shouted at roll call. The central concept of Rene Descartes, who brought philosophy forward into its modern era, was the primacy of consciousness; that ill knowledge, all truths and principles of being must begin with the individual sensation of mind and self. Thus, we come to the old adage Cogito, ergo sum; I think therefore I am . In addition to Descartes and Kant, there were of course a great many other philosophers who argued along these lines—Leibniz, Berkeley, Schopenhauer, and Bergson to name a few. But that former pair, surely among the very greatest of all time, mark the epochs of modern philosophical history. All start with “self.” Much has been written about this sense of self, and entire religions (three of the four branches of Buddhism, Zen, and the mail stream Advaita Vedanta sect of Hinduism, for example) are dedicated to proving that a separate independent self, isolated from the vast bulk of the cosmos, is a fundamentally illusory sensation It suffices to say that introspection would in all cases conclude that thinking itself—as Descartes put it so simply—is normally synonymous with the “1” feeling. The obverse side of this coin is experienced when thinking stops . Many people have had moments, when watching a baby or a pet or something in nature, when they feel a rush of ineffable joy, of being taken “out of oneself” and essentially becoming the object observed. On January 26, 1976, the New York Times Magazine published an entire article on this phenomenon, along with a survey showing that at least 25 percent of the population have had at least one experience that they described as “a sense of the unity of everything,” and “a sense that all the universe is alive” Fully 40 percent of the 600 respondents additionally reported it as “a conviction that love is at the center of everything” and said it entailed “a feeling of deep and profound peace.” Well, very lovely, but those who have never “been there,” which disappear to be the majority of the populace, who stand on


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marymount_Manhattan_College

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the outside of that nightclub looking in, might well shrug it off and attribute it to wishful thinking or hallucination. A survey may be scientifically sound, but the conclusions mean little by themselves. We need much more than this in attempting to understand the sense of self. But perhaps we can grant that something happens when the thinking mind takes a vacation. Absence of verbal thought or day-dreaming clearly doesn't mean torpor and vacuity. Rather , it's as if the seat of consciousness escapes from its jumpy, nervous, verbal isolation cell and takes residence in some other section of the theater , where the lights shine more brightly and where things feel more directly more real . On what street is this theater found? Where are the sensations of life? We can start with everything visual that is currently being perceived all around us—this book you are holding, for example. Language and custom say that it all lies outside us in the external work. Yet we've already seen that nothing can be perceived that is not already interacting with our consciousness, which is why biocentric axiom number one is that nature or the so-called external world must be correlative with consciousness. One doesn't exist without the other. What this means is that when we do not look at the Moon the Moon effectively vanishes—which, subjectively, is obvious enough. If we still think of the Moon and believe that it's out there orbiting the Earth, or accept that other people are probably watch- ng it, all such thoughts are still mental constructs. The bottom-line sue here is if no consciousness existed at all, in what sense would he Moon persist, and in what form? So what is it that we see when we observe nature? The answer in terms of image-location and neural mechanics is actually more straightforward than almost any other aspect of biocentrism. Because the images of the trees, grass, the book you're holding, and everything else that's perceived is real and not imaginary, it must be physically happening in some location. Human physiology texts answer this without ambiguity. Although the eye and retina gather photons that deliver their payloads of bits of the electromagnet force, these are channeled through heavy-duty cables straight back until the actual perception of images themselves physically occurs in the hack of the brain, augmented by other nearby locations, in special sections that are as vast and labyrinthine as the hallways of the Milky Way, and contain as many neurons as there are stars in the galaxy. This, according to human physiology texts, is where the actual colors, shapes, and movement “happen.” This is where they are perceived or cognized. Some may imagine that there are two worlds, one “out there” and a separate one being cognized inside the skull. But the “two worlds” model is a myth. Nothing is perceived except the perceptions themselves, and nothing exists outside of consciousness. Only one visual reality is extant and there it is. Right there. The “outside world” is, therefore, located within the brain or the mind . Of course, this is so astounding for many people , even if it is obvious to those who study the brain, that it becomes possible to over-think the issue and come up with attempted refutations. “Yeah, but what about someone born blind?” “And what about touch; if things aren't out there, how can we feel them?” None of that changes the reality: touch, too, occurs only within consciousness or the mind. Every aspect of that butter, its existence on every level, is not outside of one's being. The real mind-twister to all this, and the reason some are loath to accept what should be patently obvious, is that its implications destroy the entire house-of- cards worldview that we have embraced all our lives . If that is consciousness, or mind, right in front of us, then consciousness extends indefinitely to all that is cognized —calling into question the nature and reality of something we will devote an entire chapter to—space . If that before us is consciousness, it can change the area of scientific focus from the nature of a cold, inert, external universe to issues such as how your consciousness relates to mine and to that of the animals. But we'll put aside, for the moment, questions of the unity of consciousness. Let it suffice to say that any overarching unity of consciousness is not just difficult or impossible to prove but is fundamentally incompatible with dualistic languages—which adds an additional burden of making it difficult to grasp with logic alone.



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Consciousness Creates Reality

SQUID (superconducting quantum interference device) proves consciousness generates and influences realityChopra ‘7


Many experiments have been conducted in remote viewing, commonly called clairvoyance, but one of the most notable took place at Stanford University, where scientists built a machine called a SQUID, or superconducting quantum interference device. It's enough for us to know that this device, which measures the activity of subatomic particles, specifically quarks, is very well shielded from all outside magnetic Forces. This shielding begins with layers of- copper and aluminum, but to fully ensure that no outside force can affect the mechanism, exotic metals wrap the inner core. In 1972 a SQUID was installed in the basement of a laboratory at Stanford, apparently doing nothing except tracing out the same hill-and-valley S-curve on a length of graph paper. This curve represented the constant magnetic field of the Earth; if a quark passed through the held the machine would register it with changes in the pattern being drawn. A young laser physicist named Hal Puthoff (later to become a noted quantum theorist) decided that aside from its main use, the SQUID would make a perfect test of psychic powers. Very few people, including the scientists at Sanford, knew the inner workings of the machine. A letter Puthoff wrote in search of- a psychic who would take up the challenge drew a response from Ingo Swann, a New York artist with psychic abilities. Swann was flown to California without being told in advance about either the test or the SQUID. When he first saw it, he seemed a bit put off. But he agreed to “look” inside the machine, and as he did, the S-curve on the graph paper changed pattern—something it almost never did—only to go back to its normal functioning as soon as Swann stopped paying attention to it. A startled Puthoff asked him to repeat this, so for forty-five seconds Swann concentrated upon seeing the inside of the machine, and for exactly that interval the recording device drew a new pattern, a long plateau on the paper instead of hills and valleys. Swann then drew a sketch of what he saw as the inner workings of the SQUID and when these were checked with an expert, they perfectly matched the actual construction. Swann was vague about how he had changed the magnetic input that the machine was built to measure. IT turned out that if he merely thought about the SQUID, not trying to change it at all, the recording device showed alterations in the surrounding magnetic field.



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Collective Consciousness

The failures of past science are evidence of the collective consciousness.Chopra ‘6

(Deepak, m.d. chairman and co-founder of the chopra center for wellbeing, The God Delusion? Part 7, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/the-god-delusion-part-7_b_35513.html)

It's hard for materialists not to thump their chests, as Dawkins so brazenly does. Unfortunately, the Theory of Everything has hit a brick wall. Quantum physics lacks the power to cross the border into the invisible world that lies beyond subatomic particles, the so-called virtual domain. Not only is this the realm of 'dark matter' and 'dark energy'--mysterious shadows of the matter and energy we see around us--but all possible universes also lie across the same boundary, as well as the "zero point" where space and time are born. Genetics seems to be riding higher, but behind the

display of public triumph, biology has not solved the existence of mind, and therefore the same obstacle faces both fields. An invisible world lies sealed off from investigation, leaving us to trace its footprints and echoes. MRIs and CAT scans are impressive but limited. As someone once commented, brain research is like putting a stethoscope to the outside of the Astrodome and trying to figure out the rules of football. Dawkins finds consciousness (as well as quantum physics) totally irrelevant, a comment on his own intellectual limitations rather than reality. If God is going to become viable again, he will have to be a God who solves some key mysteries in the virtual domain: --What separates life from inert matter? --What part does the observer play in creating reality? --How does the infinite quantum field organize and govern every event in the universe? --How does chaos relate to order? Are they enemies or secret allies? --How did evolution overcome entropy, the ceaseless march of the physical universe toward chaos and the deep freezer of "heat death"? --

Why is the universe so amazingly hospitable to human life? This last question is the most pressing one, for both believers and non-believers. To claim that the swirling, chaotic quantum soup that erupted from the Big Bang evolved into human life by random chance is only believable because science has no urgent need to find a credible alternative. As long as a scientist stands outside nature with his nose pressed against the glass like a child peering through a bakery shop window (to borrow an image from the noted physicist John Wheeler) we get a false picture of the

cosmos. The only advantage of isolating yourself in this way is that it fits the scientific method. But no matter how many rats run through the maze, it's futile to pretend that we are outside the experiment. The truth is completely different: --

We are imbedded in the universe. What we observe is ourselves reflected back at us. --Every sight, sound, texture, taste, and smell is the product of an observer. As the observer changes, so do all these qualities. --We perceive imagination, beauty, creativity, etc. in ourselves and thus we see the same in Nature. Every attribute of the human mind is imbedded in the universe. Why can you remember your birthday and the face of someone you love? Because DNA can remember how to produce generations of human beings. Why does DNA remember? There's the mystery. We can link memory as a human

attribute to chemical memory. But when we ask where chemicals learned to remember, science is baffled. Dissecting DNA is one thing. Asking the "why" of DNA is another. Dawkins feels that why is a foolish, probably meaningless question, totally devoid of scientific interest. So be it. But why is the single most important question humans ask, particularly when it comes to ourselves. Ultimately we want to know who we are and our purpose for being here. Dawkins doesn't seem to have any doubt about who he is: he's the evolutionary byproduct of chemical forces, physical laws, random events, natural selection,

competition, adaptation, and survival. So is an amoeba. Sadly, this reductionist picture of human life is devoid of meaning. It's merely a map of how a physical machine called the body came to be built. Such knowledge is like knowing everything about a computer except how to plug it in.

The collective unconscious is proven by social contagion.Chopra ‘10



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(Deepak, m.d. chairman and co-founder of the chopra center for wellbeing, The Shadow Effect, 2010, p. 24-26 //LH)

Skeptics have a right to point out that all of this still doesn't prove that there is a collective unconscious. Where is the evidence that members of a society are invisibly linked, without words or peer pressure binding them? A new field of sociology is studying "social contagion," a deeply mysterious phenomenon that could change everything we think about our behavior. We all experience how fads and trends work. Out of the blue, everybody seems to be doing something new, whether it's texting, fleeing MySpace for Twitter, or playing a new video game. Fads are contagious behavior. You catch them from other people. Yet no one knows how behavior goes viral. What makes a group of people all decide to act the same way? This becomes a crucial medical question if you want a group to stop doing something harmful-if you want to persuade young people not to smoke, for example, or the general population to stop getting obese. The most advanced work on this question has come from two researchers at Harvard, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, whose new book, Connected, was previewed in a recent New York Times Sunday magazine article. Christakis and Fowler analyzed data from the nation's biggest heart study, which has followed three generations of citizens in Framingham, Massachusetts. They looked into the behavior of over five thousand people who were mapped according to fifty-one thousand social connections with family, friends, and coworkers. Their first discovery was that when one person gained weight , started smoking, or got sick, close family members and friends were around 50 percent more likely to behave the same way. This reinforces a social-science principle that is decades old: behavior runs in groups. We have all experienced it as peer pressure or by observing behavioral traits that seem to "run in families." The reverse is also true. If you run with a healthy crowd, you are more likely to adopt healthy behavior yourself Not just health is involved; almost any behavior can be contagious. In a dorm at college, if you happen to room with someone with good study habits and high grades, your grades are likely to improve by association. But the second finding from Christakis and Fowler was far more mysterious. They found that social connections can skip a link. If person A is obese and knows person B, who isn't, a friend of person B is still 20 percent more likely to be obese, and a friend of that friend is 10 percent more likely. This "three degrees of connection" holds good for all kinds of behavior. A friend of a friend can make you prone to smoking, unhappiness, or loneliness. The statistics are there to prove it, even though you have never met this friend of a friend. The findings of Christakis and Fowler suggest invisible connectors that run through a whole society. If their research holds up, think about the implications. The notion of a collective unconscious was posed almost a century ago by Jung. Did Jung hit on invisible connectors long before data came along to support them? That's really a side question to the main one: What kind of connections can exist invisibly, without people talking to each other, watching each other's behavior, or even knowing about each other's existence? These are complex issues, and I'm giving only a hint of how mysterious they are. But the new research on social contagion is exciting, because it supports the notion that there is actually one mind that coordinates not just how people catch on to fads or decide to imitate each other, not just how distant brain cells know what other brain cells are doing, but far- flung phenomena like how twins separated by thousands of miles suddenly know what's happening to each other . These invisible connectors are bringing the collective unconscious into many, many areas of life. Social contagion is making news because we all like to rely on data, but the possibility that we all participate in one mind challenges religion, philosophy, and the meaning of life itself. The shadow, then, is a shared project. Anyone can have a hand in building it. All you need is the ability to remain unconscious. Countless fear-mongers believe they are doing good. Every defender of the homeland expects to be honored and praised. Tribes warring against other tribes deeply believe that they must struggle in order to survive. We resist our shadow and deny its existence because of past indoctrination and the hypnosis of social conditioning. Childhood experiences cause unending later reminders that "this is good, this is bad; this is divine, this is diabolical." Such indoctrination is the way all societies are structured. What we overlook is that we are creating a shared self at the same time. If children were taught to become aware of their shadow, sharing even dark feelings, forgiving



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themselves for not being "good" all the time, learning how to release shadow impulses through healthy outlets, then there would be much less damage to society and the ecosystem.

Plant test shows consciousness is interconnectedChopra ‘7


In a long series of experiments in the Sixties, an FBI expert named Cleve Backster hooked plants up to polygraphs, knowing that lie detectors work by measuring changes in moisture on the skin surface. In other words, here’s what happened next. Then at thirteen minutes, fifty-five seconds chart time, the imagery entered my mind of burning the leaf I was testing. I didn’t verbalize, I didn’t touch the plant, I didn’t touch the equipment. The only thing that could have been a stimulus for the plant was the mental image. Yet the plant went wild. The pen jumped right off the top of the chart. This first startling observation in February 1966 led to a host of follow-ups as Backster measured responses to cigarette smoke, negative thoughts, and strong emotions; it turned out that houseplants register how people feel around them. The most remarkable finding, perhaps, was that if Backster hooked up a pair of plants and injured one plant in a separate room, the other plant registered the same disturbance in electrical activity as if it had been injured itself. The polygraph needle jumped even though the two plants had no physical connection and it, and it kept jumping even when the plants were separated by a greater distance. One can’t help but be reminded of the various studies in which identical twins sense what is happening to each other at a distance, to the point that one particular twin knew the instant his brother was electrocuted climbing a telephone pole and testified to actually feeling the pain himself. Are human twins paired through the same complementarily that bonds electrons in deep space?



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Digger Death



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Ontology Frontline

Death is the core of ontological interrogation – the Aff’s/Neg’s project is an inauthentic flight from death and an attempt to pacify us toward it by depersonalizing the object of death and assuring us that it can be avoidedDemske 1970 (James M. Demske, ”Being, Man, and Death” p. 26-29) [M Leap]

The moment of existence or being-ahead-of-itself means that Dasein understands itself by projecting itself against the horizon of its possibilities. Death is one of these; in fact, it is the possibility of all possibilities, because it stands ahead of Dasein in a unique way, forming the most ultimate possibility of its being. Put crudely, the last thing that Dasein can be, is dead. But death is the extreme possibility of existence in a much more profound

and less ontic way, in the sense that it has an aspect of totality which no other possibility has. It enfolds and engulfs all other possibilities; just as it enwraps Dasein's total being-in-the-world, wholly and entirely. In this possibility, "the issue is nothing less than Dasein's being-in-the·world. Its death is the possibility of no-Ionger-being-able-to-be-there" CSZ 250). As Heidegger provocatively expresses it: "death is the possibility of the complete impossibility of Dasein" (SZ 250), "the possibility of the impossibility of any existence at all" CSZ 262). Death, then, involves the totality of Dasein's own irreplaceable and incommunicable being, all that is most distinctive, proper, and personal to Dasein. Death is the most its own Ceigenste) of all the possibilities of Dasein. Moreover,

death throws Dasein completely on its own, causing it to stand alone, and dissolving all of its relations to other beings; it is thus a nonrelational Cunbezugliche) possibility. And since this is the extreme and total possibility, Dasein has no resources to avoid, overtake, or recover from it; death is thus an insuperable or unsurpassable (unuberholbare) possibility (SZ 250).18 The element of facticity in concern reveals the thrownness of Dasein; through its ontological disposition Dasein finds itself already-in-the-world. Insofar as death belongs to being-in-the-world, Dasein is also thrown into death, which it finds as its ultimate possibility-to-be. Thus Dasein exists as thrown being-unto-death; thrown unto its own most distinctive possibility, which is nonrelational and un surpassable (SZ 251). The third moment of concern, fallenness, reveals Dasein as beingwith other beings confronting it in the world, among which it generally exists inauthentically by

accepting from them external norms for its activity. Inauthenticity is especially noticeable in the matter of death, for here Dasein tends to follow the crowd most abjectly, accepting the evasive and pacifying general attitude that death is really not relevant to life,

indeed not even to be mentioned in polite, enlightened conversation. If at times one becomes aware that he too must face death, one sidesteps the problem with the comforting cliche: "Of course everybody must die some day, but. . . not just yet." In this way Dasein effectively blinds itself to the existential reality of death as something written ineradicably into its basic ontological structure, and therefore as an ever-present possibility of its own being. Dasein flees from its own death; it exists ill a mode of inauthentic sight which conceals death as an existential (SZ 252). This brief analysis according to the three moments of concern thus reveals death as the possibility-to-be of Dasein (I) which is most distinctively its own, nonrelational, and unsurpassable, (2) into which it is thrown, and (3) from which it usually inauthentically sees by concealing its true nature. C. The Analysis of Our Everyday Certainty Our everyday inauthentic being-un to-death knows about death, even with certainty. But the certainty is

beclouded by a falsely pacifying equivocation, which reveals itself in the thought: "One must die some day, but not just yet." More accurately this

means: "But I am not going to die just yet." The anonymous "one," which initially includes the speaker, is unthinkingly turned into a completely nonpersonal "one," who is really "no one." This "no one" dies, but "certainly not I." Can such an equivocal and evasive

attitude contribute anything toward a genuine existential concept of death? The everyday certainty of death is based on the undeniable empirical fact

that men die. But since this certitude comes from the outside rather than from within oneself, and is always related to other [folk] men and not oneself, it does not strike Dasein in its own uniqueness but only as a vague "someone," who also has to die some day like the others. The death of which Dasein is

certain is thus strictly speaking not its own, but that of a vague "someone." There is accordingly the possibility of evading and ignoring death in its existential mineness, as something which is individually and exclusively one's own. But precisely this phenomenon of evading death shows that man is certain of death on a level of existence much deeper than that of external sensible experience. For if he had merely an empirical certainty of death, a conviction coming only from without and referring not to his own death but only to that of others, why then would he feel it necessary to protect himself from death? Why must he flee, why must he equivocate in order to be comforted in the face of death? These questions indicate that man's fear of death comes rather

from within, from a primordial self-knowledge involving tlle awareness of one's own existential fragility. The death from which [folk] man flees

because of [their] his everyday certainty is not death rendered harmless by being relegated to the realm of the misfortunes of others, but death insofar as it constitutes a threat to one's own being, or, ontologically speaking, insofar as it pertains to the basic structure of one's own existence; otherwise flight would be pointless. Man is sure of death from within. He knows death insofar as it touches his own being. In fact, he is just as certain of death as he is of his own being-in-the-world, for death is merely the reverse side of this same coin. The phenomenon of flight from death reveals



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what it was trying to conceal: that Dasein has a certainty about death which is not purely external and empirical, but rather interior and existential, because rooted in Dasein's very existence as one of its constitutive structures. This type of certainty differs also from the purely theoretical certainty of scientific knowledge. In fact, flit does not belong at all to the gradations of evidence we can have about the present-at-hand. . . [but] is more primordial than any certainty that relates to entities encountered within-the-world or to formal objects; for it is certain of being-in-the-world [itself]" CSZ 265). Thus the vain attempt to rest satisfied with a merely empirical certainty about death, which would leave open the possibility of evading the question of one's own death, shows rather that death is a possibility which is

so profoundly a part of Dasein's structure that it is existentially certain, as certain as existence itself CSZ 2;7-;8, 26;).11 There is a further point. By the innocent

sounding phrase, "but not just yet," Dasein is furtively trying to deny to death its ever-present possibility, to postpone death to some indeterminate future, to a "sometime." Paradoxical though it may seem, Dasein is endeavoring to attach a temporal definiteness to its certainty about death, by assigning it a place in the distant future. But this further attempt at subterfuge only reveals another essential structure of the existential

concept of death, namely, that it is completely indefinite and undetermined with regard to its "when." The desire to put off death into an indefinite future

is inauthentic, precisely because the possibility of death cannot be put off; death is possible at each and every instant. The certainty of the fact of death is thus coupled inextricably with the uncertainty or indeterminacy of its "when." The everyday Bight from the ever-present existential possibility of death thus reveals that death is an indeterminately certain possibility of Dasein CSZ 2;8). On the basis of the analysis just completed, first of the three moments of concern and then of the everyday certainty of death, we can now formulate the full existential concept of death. Death in the existential sense is the thrown being of Dasein unto its own

most proper and distinctive possibility, which is nonrelational, unsurpassable, certain, and indeterminate with respect to its "when," from which Dasein generally

flees in an inauthentic attempt to conceal its true nature.

They'll say that [nuclear war] outweighs but that's the type of impact calculus that we need to rethink and question—human will is not the master of being. Attempting to gain that kind of technological control over the world only enframes us in the death of our essence. This is ontologically prior to [the threat of nuclear war] in multiple ways and only embracing death as a positive gateway to being can solve by unconcealing the relationship between being and deathDemske 1970 (James M. Demske, ”Being, Man, and Death” p. 135-138) [Gender Paraphrased, M Leap]

A new trend in Heidegger's thinking about death arises from the problematic of the history of being. In the present age of technology, [folks] stands under an unprecedented threat of death. The atom bomb is generally viewed as the instrument of this new, universal danger. Heidegger, however, finds a more basic, ontological threat of death in the essence of technology itself: "It is not the much discussed atom bomb, as one particular kind of killing-machine, that is so deadly. What has long menaced [folks] with death, even with the death of his essence, is the absolute of pure willing, in the sense of the conscious imposition of man's will upon everything" CHW 271). The real danger of death in the present age, as Heidegger sees it, comes not from the atom bomb, but from the theory of absolute subjectivity , the doctrinaire assertion of man as the absolute subject, the master of all beings . This is the greater danger, for it means the destruction of [folks] not only in [their] ontic life, but in [their] very essence.19 Here Heidegger overturns everyday modes of thought by reducing them to existential-ontological dimensions. He is not at all interested in a quantitative comparison of two dangers lying on the same level, but in an ontological or 'grounding' relation. The doctrine of man as the subject who is lord of all, who can manipulate the totality of beings , is by far the greater threat because it makes possible technology's claim to absolute power. On the basis of this doctrine, [human being] understands [itself] as the being which can form, transform, manipulate, build, and destroy the whole of creation. As a result of this doctrine [human being] forgets [its] vulnerability as part of the totality of beings. As history has shown, the unrestrained struggle of man against beings inexorably turns into the struggle of man against man. Man's desire to dominate other kinds of beings inevitably entails the desire of some men to dominate other men. The violence and wars of the twentieth century offer ample proof of this. The urge to create and dominate entangles man in the evils of slavery and destruction, not as a



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result of the machinery he invents to carry out his purposes, but because of the underlying conviction of his absolute power. Humanistic subjectivism is the greater menace to [humankind].20 The essence of [folks] consists in [their] relation to being; he is essentially the shepherd, the guardian, the steward of being, whose task is to care for the arrival of being among beings. But in technology, which represents the acme of subjectivism, this relation is reversed. [humanity] is seen not as the servant of being, but as the unlimited master of all beings-a reversal which entails a direct denial of the simple, hard fact that being is not the plaything but the supreme benefactor of [humanity]. The denial cannot fail to have fatal consequences. [Folks] lose s the nearness to being which constitutes [their] true and proper essence: because of technology [folks are], to all intents and purposes, essentially dead. But isn't technology a glorification of the might of man and thus really an exaltation of his essence? The glorification is actually illusory, because technology, if allowed to become a doctrinaire 'technologism,' necessarily tends to swallow up man's existence. Everything becomes fair game for the exercise of power; all beings are potential materials of production. Thus "the earth and its atmosphere become raw material. [Folks] becomes human material " (HW 267); he is merely "the most important raw material" (VA 92). There is the frightening prospect "that man will lose his self in unlimited productivity" (HW 270) and become a mere "functionary of technology" (HW 271). [Folks] would then no longer exist as absolutely distinctive Dasein, but only as something ready-at-hand, emptied of his real self, killed in his essence -a '[human]' without the essence of man. The eventual deliverance from this danger must come from the same source as the threat itself , "from there, . . . where the issue turns on the mortals in their very essence" (HW 273). The situation demands a rethinking of the essence of [humanity] man, a rediscovery of man in his relation to being. To that end, there is a crucial need of men who can perceive and point out the danger, who are strong enough to experience and withstand the full force of the threat, who can peer unshaken into the abyss of the utter destitution of our age (HW 273, 248-49). Heidegger found in Holderlin such a man. Following Holderlin's example, Heidegger is endeavoring "to bring man back again into his essence" CHB 61), so that man can "find the way to his abode in the truth of being" (HB I I 5). In the face of the threat to man's essence, Heidegger strives for a rethinking of the essence of man, a conversion, a nzetanoia. This is not the intrusion of a religious or theological concern in the traditional sense, because Heidegger is not trying to stimulate a conversion to God, but to being and to a new view of man in his relation to being. Consequently, his interest remains philosophical. It is not, however, without theological consequences, since Heidegger views the needed philosophical conversion as the indispensable prerequisite for a possible return of man to God or a new advent of God to men. First, the horizon must be opened up for such a confrontation; the stage must be set by accomplishing a new understanding, both of man's own self and of being, a new way of thinking in which the dimension of the holy and the realm of mystery are accorded their rightful place. This is the sense in which the following words of Heidegger are to be understood: "The beginning of a new era does not occur merely because a new god bursts in from hiding, or the old god in a new way. Where shouJd he tum on his arrival, if a place has not been previously prepared for him by man? How could there ever be a suitable residence for God unless the splendor of divinity had previously begun to shine in everything that is?" (HW 249) C. Death and Being To find [their] his way back to [their] his own essence , man must rethink being and his own relation to it. But a new understanding of death is also required. As the determining existential of Dasein, death especially must be seen in its relation to being . In this context, Heidegger discusses death (I) as something positive which belongs to the realm of being, (2) as a place for the breakthrough to being , (3) as the passage to authentic dwelling with being, and (4) in its relationship with language, a relation which is ultimately grounded in being . In the discussion of the threat to man's essence posed by modem technology, the concept 'death' is obviously used analogously; in the strict sense, death is the extreme and all-embracing possibility of Dasein's individualized existence. Still, these two usages of the term have an intrinsic connection, for the menacing danger of the death of [humanity’s] man's essence stems from the misunderstanding or the forgetting of the true essence of [humanity] man, which is decisively determined by the existential of death in the strict sense. In other words, essential death threatens man because he no longer understands



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his own essence, and therefore misunderstands death. Thus Heidegger writes: "Our age is destitute not only because God is dead, but because the mortals can scarcely recognize and cope with their own mortality . The mortals are not yet in possession of their essence . Death withdraws and becomes an enigma. The mystery of pain remains veiled. Love is not learned. . . . The age is destitute because the unconcealment of the essence of pain, death, and love is absent " CHW 253).

We should not run away from death, but instead run towards it – the confrontation with our own deaths is ontologically prior to any authentic care for others. Only in this way can we separate ourselves from the herd mentality of public opinion. Demske 1970 (James M. Demske, ”Being, Man, and Death” p. 31-32) [M Leap]

The existential outline or project of authentic being-unto-death takes its orientation from the structures of the existential concept of death. Death is an existential, a possibility of Dasein, indeed the possibility of totality, of being itself in a total way, since it is the one possibility which includes all other possibilities. Authentic being-unto-death will be that understanding and comportment which holds firm to the true nature of death, refusing to ignore it as an existential possibility. It will be, as Heidegger says, a view which endures the possibility of death precisely as a possibility (die Moglichkeit des Todes als Moglichkeit aushalten). This enduring, or holding out against the possibility of death Heidegger calls "advancing" or "running forward" toward death (Vorlaufen in den Tod). It thus represents the exact opposite of the flight from death which epitomizes inauthenticity. The distinctive characteristic of advancing is that it stubbornly confronts the possibility of death as a possibility. Thus it is distinguished from several other conceivable attitudes, such as pondering, meditating on, brooding over, wondering about, or awaiting death as an event due to occur at some particular point in time. In all of these attitudes the pure possibility-character of death becomes mingled with actuality, and thus the essential nature of death as an existential, as a possibility-to-be, is lost sight of (SZ 261-62). Combining the notion of advancing toward death in its full character as possibility with the elements of the existential concept of death already established, we uncover the following ontological structure of authentic being-un to-death. The understanding of death as the most proper and distinctive possibility of Dasein leads to the realization that it is precisely through death that Dasein is liberated from domination by the impersonal "someone" (das Man). Since death touches Dasein in its own reality, determining its existence individually and irreplaceably, the attitude of advancing toward death, of confronting it as an ever-present possibility of one's own being, is the first step toward recovery from the inauthentic condition of the someone-self, which lets itself be completely swayed by public opinion. Death is also a nonrelational possibility of Dasein. Thus, the more resolutely we advance toward it, the more clearly we see the aspect of aloneness which characterizes Dasein in its being-unto-death. Advancing reveals that all being-with the other beings which make up one's world, whether in the mode of taking care of nonhuman things or caring for other men, fades away in the sight of death. The ever clearer realization that death cuts all one's innerworldly ties thus opens the way to the authentic acceptance of responsibility for one's own completely individualized being.



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The affirmative amounts to empty words of solace directed outwards to the dying. The real purpose of this gesture is to avoid our own confrontation with death. This sucks us up into the herd mentality of public opinion – recognizing the constant possibility of death is key to authentic being and balance between self and other.Demske 1970 (James M. Demske, ”Being, Man, and Death” p. 38-39) [M Leap]

The second element of concern, thrownness or facticity, is revealed by the ontological disposition of Dasein. Using this element as a touchstone to distinguish inauthentic being-un to-death from the existentially projected advancing toward death, we find that the difference may be expressed as that between ontic fear and ontological anxiety. The disposition characterizing the inauthentic attitude toward death is that of fear in the face of an event which has yet to happen. This fear comes to light in the very attempt to conceal it by falsely tranquilizing oneself and others with regard to death, by offering empty and insincere consolation to the bereaved, and by overeager efforts to distract one's thoughts from the morbid unpleasantness of death CSZ 253-54)' On the other hand, advancing toward death is accompanied by the basic ontological disposition of anxiety. This consists in freely, consciously, maturely, and soberly holding oneself open to death as a continually imminent, ever-present possibility of one's own being. Anxiety brings Dasein face to face with its total self in the form of its uttermost possibility, and thereby opens the way to authenticity by the acceptance of one's own basic structure as being-unto-death CSZ 265-66). Inauthentic being-unto-death is, finally, a surrender to the fallenness in which Dasein at first and usually finds itself. This takes the form of an evasive flight, which conceals the true nature of death CSZ 254). But advancing toward death offers an authentic response to the human condition of fallenness among innerworldly beings. Recognizing fallenness as an existential component of its being, which can therefore never be completely rooted out but at best overcome and controlled, Dasein sees the flimsiness of all the possibilities of self-realization arising from its being-with other beings, since these possjbilities are all intermedi ate or secondary when compared with the ultimate and toweringly transcendent possibility of death. Thus Dasein can resolve to retrieve itself from fallenness by enduring the possibility of death precisely as an ever-present possibility. It is then in a position to offer constant battle against the distracting inRuence of everyday activities and concerns. By advancing toward death, it will remain in constant tension between the strong enticements of innerworldly beings and the clear claim of authentic selfhood. Advancing thus makes it possible for Dasein to exist in dynamic equilibrium between these two poles, to maintain an authentic balance and achieve a true freedom with regard to death as the most decisive structure of its own being.

The Aff approach to death focuses on the cases of nameless others – this shuck and jive move by the ego attempts to evade death as the end of “I” – this results in an ontic understanding and fear of death which causes inauthentic beingDemske 1970 (James M. Demske, ”Being, Man, and Death” p. 29-30) [M Leap]



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How does the phenomenon of inauthenticity present itself in the matter of being-unto-death? The anonymous "someone-self' knows death from its experience of the death of others. It sees death merely as a "case of death," an everyday event that one reads about in the papers and sometimes experiences among one's own friends and relatives. Death is not at all conspicuous, but is simply taken for granted as part of everyday life. Thus death sinks to the status of a completely normal occurrence, something that crosses the ken of one's existence fleetingly, without leaving any traces, without exciting any special notice or raising any special questions; it is reduced to a condition of bland inconspicuousness. This inconspicuousness makes it possible to talk about death impersonally and without involvement, to let death disappear into the equivocation of the phrase, "everybody has to die some day, but it's not my tum yet." Dasein succumbs to the temptation to ignore death as a structure of its own existence, to cover up the fact that death is the most distinctive possibility of its own being. Thus an inauthentic being-un to-death is further marked by the structures of equivocation and temptation. Moreover the inauthentic someone-self tries to console itself and others regarding death. It speaks words of sympathy, it tries to distract the sorrowing and even the dying themselves from thoughts of death. It tries to tranquilize, to calm and pacify itself and others in the face of death. This equivocal, tranquilizing attitude does not even allow genuine anxiety to arise in the face of death as Dasein's possibility of totality, but generates an ontic fear of an ordinary impending occurrence. While genuine anxiety would bring Dasein to confront itself in its totality, and would thus open the way to authenticity, fear is regarded by public opinion merely as cowardly insecurity, as weakness which is to be conquered or at least hidden from view. Ontic fear of death, rather than leading to authenticity, can do no more than estrange Dasein from its own most proper possibility and thus from its own authentic self (SZ 252-55; cf. 177-78). These structures-inconspicuousness, equivocation, temptation, tranquilizing, and estrangement-are all characteristics of everyday inauthentic being-in-the-world. They reveal inauthentic being-unto-death as continual evasive Hight from death, by which Dasein distorts, misunderstands, and conceals death as its own most intimate, proper, and distinctive possibility-to-be (SZ 254).

The discussion of death as a phenomenon that affects others allows us to escape confrontation with our own death, and makes authentic being impossible Demske 1970 (James M. Demske, ”Being, Man, and Death” p. 37-38) [M Leap]

In inauthentic being-unto-death Dasein does not understand itself in terms of the exclusivity (the "mineness") of its own existence, whose uttermost possibility is death. On the contrary, Dasein sees itself as a living human organism, as something present-at-hand which is-happily-still alive, as a being for whom death is not yet a reality, but stands politely out of sight, waiting offstage. Death appears only as an ordinary everyday happening, something reported daily in the newspapers, "a case." Moreover, a case of death is always someone else's, never my own. They die, but not I; or rather, everybody dies, but not yet 1. The inauthentic attitude to death thus shows the characteristics of inconspicuousness and equivocation. Dasein learns to ignore its own death and occupy itself with what it thinks are the more immediate and pressing demands of everyday living (SZ 252-53). The attitude of advancing toward death, on the other hand, makes it possible to understand death as the most intimate and most individual possibility of one's own existence. Instead of falling prey to the inauthentic inconspicuousness of death, Dasein recognizes death as its own ever-present, uttermost possibility-to-be, a potentiality which towers over and embraces all the other possibilities of its being, and is thus of quite a different order from the limited concerns of "everyday living." Death is even seen to be the possibility which



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gives all one's other possibilities their goal and final meaning, since they all How into it, converge upon it, and find in it their completion. Thus death, far from being ordinary and inconspicuous, is Dasein's most important and all-pervasive possibility-tobe. Moreover, contrary to the equivocation which marks the inauthentic attitude, advancing acquires an ever clearer and sharper view of death as the most proper, unique, and individualizing possibility of the being of Dasein (SZ 263, 258).



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Ontology 1 st

We are powerless as long as we seek solutions as our first step. Changing the way that we interact with being allows for the possibility of real change in the future Seckinelgin ‘6 (lecturer int’l social policy @ LSE, Hakan, The Environment and International Politics, p. 111)

In this discussion I am doing two things at the same time. First, I am giving a summary of Heideggerian thinking through the formulation of Dasein and its relationality.29 Second, I am constantly alluding to an ecological understanding. It is important to realise that the ecological aspect of Heideggerian thinking can only be exposed if the understanding of Dasein is demonstrated in its in-built constitutive relationality; it is the ecological aspect. The relationship between Dasein’s structure and ecological context is interwoven. Therefore, Twill distil the ecological discussion towards the end of this chapter after the structure of Dasein is clarified. In his reversal of being an autonomous human, Heidegger constitutes his understanding on a level which may seem very distant from the political concerns that are expressed in this volume. None the less, it is the pre-ontological importance of this reconstitution of distinctive human being which allows me to conclude by politicising nature and thinking the political in terms of ecological ethics. The homeless and ever-forgetful being is at the heart of Heideggerian thought. The being (i.e. humankind defined and totalised by the modem age) is no doubt considered to be the final point in the long evolution of being. This standpoint is questioned by Heidegger as missing the real essence of being, which cannot be historicised. It is an attempt to find out the essence of being, which is hidden, concealed and cannot be reduced to an understanding of an epoch, from the modem human being in the age of technology.36 One of the important components of this problematisation is a call for thinking which is different from the thinking that is eventually geared to control and managing things: That thinking is concerned unceasingly with one single happening: In the history of Western thinking, indeed continually from the beginning, what is, is thought in reference to Being; yet the truth of being remains unthought, and not only is that truth denied to thinking as a possible experience, but Western thinking itself, and indeed in the form of metaphysics, expressly, but nevertheless unknowingly, veils the happening of that denial. (Heidegger 1977b: 57) The potential implication of this new proposal for the established concept of thinking is profound. It suggests that thinking is an experience, and in order to reach a truth through thinking it must be experienced. Therefore, it is not ‘thinking of something’ any more but ‘thinking through’ something, as in living through, being involved with. It is a call to understand being by turning to it, getting into it, rather than objectifiing, distancing it . 3’ Surely, here, a process is implied in which the other sides involved in the process have to ‘be’ as well. As argued by Ladelle McWhorter, Heidegger sees this thinking as one which ‘disciplines itself to allow things to show themselves on their own terms’ (1992: 2). The question of self- disciplined thought indeed sounds rather frustrating, as compared to modern ‘free thinking’ 32 This frustration is actually the challenge and eventually the threat of Heidegger to Western metaphysics and the modern man created therein. Moreover, it implies an ethic which is different insofar as it cares about the others in their being . Within this process of thinking about the possibility of self-disciplined thought lies the path to a new understanding of being and belonging. What is to be overcome is that the ‘new epoch of the withdrawal is one in which being adapts itself to the objectness of objects, but which, in its essence as being, thereby withdraws. This epoch characterises the innermost essence of the age we call modernity’ (Heidegger 1996: 55). The withdrawal refers to the condition of the modern ‘I’ which completed its abstraction through Descartes and finally with Kant, by arriving at an extra-natural stand



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as the ultimate truth. In order to dislocate this extreme anthropocentrism, Heidegger shows that ‘something that man himself is, and yet which exceeds him and extends beyond him, in each case comes into play for the purpose of determining entities as such as a whole’ (cited in Haar l993b: xxiii).34 Heidegger attempts to understand the essence and conditions of being human, and so turns to the beginning of the Western tradition and tries to understand the origins of the essence of being in Greek philosophy, where man is understood as being that pertains to something from within that is common to all beings in their connectedness and which binds it with the whole. In the following section the essence of being as articulated by Heidegger is examined. Frustration and disbelief are the two dominant senses as one goes deeper into Heidegger because he seems to suggest powerfully, and passionately , that nothing can be done in the face of problems. One can only watch what is happening within a social time frame in which one is located. None the less, behind this façade is the suggestion of a possibility for action that comes from the deep potential of human being. This potential has its grounds in belonging to Being. The existential condition of being opens up a new ethics. relationality with nature , within nature. The thinking process is not only about allowing things to reveal themselves, but also about human beings realising their own existential condition within nature. Therefore, it is a possibility of action presenting itself through the consciousness of human being.35 The action is the process of the realisation of self and its location in the greater existence which is supposed to result in the realisation of tension between the time-based existence of being and its ahistorical attribute of belonging to a specific time and place. Here the obvious dichotomy and existential condition of being are revealed.

Questions of ontology must be asked and answered first- they crucially inform all other aspects of policy making. “Decision-making” itself is an ontological position that we problematize. This means that our discussion of ontology acts as a filter for the rest of the debate.Dillon ‘99 (Prof of Politics, University of Lancaster, 1999, Moral Spaces, p. 97-98)

Heirs to all this, we find ourselves in the turbulent and now globalized wake of its confluence. As Heidegger-himself an especially revealing figure of the deep and mutual implication of the philosophical and the political4-never tired of pointing out, the relevance of ontology to all other kinds of thinking is fundamental and inescapable . For one cannot say anything about anything that is, without always already having made assumptions about the is as such . Any mode of thought, in short, always already carries an ontology sequestered within it. What this ontological turn does to other regional modes of thought is to challenge the ontology within which they operate. The implications of that review reverberate throughout the entire mode of thought, demanding a reappraisal as fundamental as the reappraisal ontology has demanded of philosophy. With ontology at issue, the entire foundations or underpinnings of any mode of thought are rendered problematic. This applies as much to any modern discipline of thought as it does to the question of modernity as such, with the exception, it seems, of science, which, having long ago given up the ontological questioning of when it called itself natural philosophy, appears now, in its industrialized and corporatized form, to be invulnerable to ontological perturbation. With its foundations at issue, the very authority of a mode of thought and the ways in which it characterizes the critical issues of freedom and judgment (of what kind of universe human beings inhabit, how they inhabit it, and what counts as reliable knowledge for them in it) is also put in question. The very ways in which Nietzsche, Heidegger, and other continental philosophers challenged Western ontology, simultaneously, therefore reposed the fundamental and inescapable difficulty, or aporia, for human being of decision and judgment. In



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other words, whatever ontology you subscribe to, knowingly or unknowingly, as a human being you still have to act. Whether or not you know or acknowledge it, the ontology you subscribe to will construe the problem of action for you in one way rather than another. You may think ontology is some arcane question of philosophy, but Nietzsche and Heidegger showed that it intimately shapes not only a way of thinking , but a way of being , a form of life. Decision, a fortiori political decision, in short, is no mere technique. It is instead a way of being that bears an understanding of Being, and of the fundaments of the human way of being within it . This applies, indeed applies most, to those mock innocent political slaves who claim only to be technocrats of decision making.

Don’t buy claims of extinction without first answering why death matters, our ontology arguments are a gateway.Gelvin 1989 (Michael, Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time Page 14-15)

But even the incomplete form that we have at our disposal is rich and varied in its scope and content. Excluding the two-part introduction, in which Heidegger explains his method and procedure, Division One of Being and Time concerns the “existential analytic.” The meaning of this term is to be taken literally; it is an analysis of existence. Heidegger takes the accepted and normal problem areas of philosophy and reinterprets them in terms of transcendental awareness. He takes, a concept like world for example: instead of treating the world cosmologically as an objective entirety, or epistemologically as an object of knowledge he examines what it means for a human being to be in the world. He asks: What does it mean for us to be in a world? He pursues this kind of question regarding several major concepts: e.g., What does it mean to be one’s self? to be afraid? to be such that one understands? In this way, “world,” “self,” “fear,” and “understanding” are not objective entities divorced from the type of subjective concern about them, nor are they “definitions” in any abstract or verbal sense. Each is, instead, a way in which one exists; one of the many ways in which I exist is to be aware of the world. What the world actually is, is replaced by the question of what it means for me to be in a world Heidegger calls these modes of existance whose analysis reveals what it means to be existentials in many of his arguments in which he describes the nature of these existentials, Heidegger points out that, like the Kantian categories, they are not the result of an abstraction from experiance; rather, they are presupposçd in an experience and make that experience possible: hence they logically come prior to any experience and are a priori. When I ask, How is it possible for me to understand what it means to be in the world? my answer cannot lie in any consideration of the factual world that I indeed do experience For when I ask how something is possible, I am not asking for its factual characteristics, but rather for what might be called its transcendental presuppositions. When Kant points out that the category of cause and effect is presupposed in scientific explanation and thereby makes science possible, he is stating an essential philosophical point. If one tries to find evidence of cause and effect in empirical observation, one is bound to end - in a fruitless search, as David Hume so adequately demonstrated. Kant is right in saying that causality is a priori; and it is the condition un4er which science itself is made possible. In a similar way, when one realizes that one is aware of one’s own existence, one must ask for the modes of awareness that make possible such confrontation of one’s meaning. Whatever the explanation for any such awareness , it must be of the character of an a priori , otherwise it would not explain the fact of awareness. The explanation of a fact cannot ever be the result of a fact; it must, indeed, logically precede it. For this reason, Heidegger’s existential analytic is an analysis of the a priori conditions under which one’s existence is made meaningful



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Quals/Science Debate



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Epistemology D/A

Our argument is also an Epistemology D/A—the Aff's hypotheses can't accommodate for recent experimental findings, means they can't be correct. Our hypothesis is a better fit for the evidence so voting Aff is bad science—bad science is debilitating to the coherence of our knowledge systems (this is true no matter whether you're acting as a policy maker or a philosopher—bad science is bad science)Lanza – Robert Lanza. MD, is considered one of the leading cell scientists in the world. He is currently Chief Scientific

Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and Berman 2k9 Bob Berman is an author and the most widely read astronomer in the world, he is director of the Storm King Observatory in Cornwall, New York, and of the Overlook Observatory in Woodstock, New York, he is an adjunct professor of astronomy at Marymount Manhattan College. Biocentrism. 2009. p.1-2 [m leap]

Our understanding of the universe as a whole has reached a dead end. The “meaning” of quantum physics has been debated since it was first discovered in the 1930s, but we are no closer understanding it n]ow than we were then. The “theory of everything” that was promised tor decades to be just around the corner has been stuck for decades in the abstract mathematics of string theory, with its unproven and unprovable assertions. But it's worse than that. Until recently, we thought we knew what the universe was made of, but it now turns out that 96 percent of the universe is composed of dark matter and dark energy, and we have virtually no idea what they are. We've accepted the Big Bang, despite the increasingly greater need to jury-rig it to fit our observations (as in the 1979 acceptance of a period of exponential growth, known as inflation, for which the physics is basically unknown). It even turns out that the Big Bang has no answer for one of the greatest mysteries m the universe: why is the universe exquisitely fine-tuned to support life? Our understanding of the fundamentals of the universe is actually retreating before our eyes. The more data we gather, the more we've had to juggle our theories or ignore findings that simply make no sense. This book proposes a new perspective: that our current theories of the physical world don't work, and can never be made to work. Until they account for life and consciousness. This book proposes that, rather than a belated and minor outcome after billions of years of lifeless physical processes, life and consciousness are absolutely fundamental to our understanding of the universe. We call this new perspective biocentrism. In this view, life is not an accidental by-product of the laws of physics. Nor is the nature or history of the universe the dreary play of billiard balls that we've been taught since grade school . Through the eyes of a biologist and an astronomer, we will unlock the cages in which Western science has unwittingly managed to confine itself. The twenty-first century is predicted to be the century of biology, a shift from the previous century dominated by physics. It seems fitting, then, to begin the century by turning the universe outside-in and unifying the foundations of science, not with imaginary strings that occupy equally imaginary unseen dimensions, but with a much simpler idea that is rife with so many shocking new perspectives that we are unlikely ever to see reality the same way again. Biocentrism may seem like a radical departure from our current understanding, and it is, but the hints have appeared all around us for decades. Some of the conclusions of biocentrism may resonate with aspects of Eastern religions or certain New Age philosophies. This is intriguing, but rest assured there is nothing New Age about this book. The conclusions of biocentrism are based on mainstream science, and it is a logical extension of the work of some of our greatest scientific minds.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marymount_Manhattan_College



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock,_New_York

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Overlook_Observatory&action=edit&redlink=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornwall,_New_York




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“Logic” Framework

Our argument may seem counterintuitive, but you still have to hold the Aff up to the same standard of argumentation on this issue that you would with any other argument. Impassioned stories of the delight they’ve found in life or pleas to “common sense” and intrinsic value aren’t arguments – they’re excuses for debate. Make the Aff logically justify their stance that physical existence in this world is good. Benatar ‘6

(David, Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Cape Town, Better Never to Have Been, pg 202 – 206)

The view that coming into existence is always a harm runs counter to most people’s intuitions. They think that this view simply cannot be right. Its implications, discussed in Chapters 4 to 6, do not fare any better in the court of common intuitions. The idea that people should not have babies, that there is a presumption in favour of abortion (at least in the earlier stages of gestation), and that it would be best if there were no more conscious life on the planet is likely to be dismissed as ridiculous. Indeed, some people are likely to find these views deeply offensive. A number of philosophers have rejected other views because they imply that it would be better not to bring new people into existence. We already saw, in the previous chapter, that a number of thinkers reject the maximin principle because it implies that there should be no more people. There are other examples, however. Peter Singer rejects a ‘moral ledger’ view of utilitarianism, whereby the creation of an unsatisfied preference is a kind of ‘debit’ that is cancelled only when that preference is satisfied. He says that his view must be rejected because it entails that it would be wrong ‘to bring into existence a child who will on the whole be very happy, and will be able to satisfy nearly all her preferences, but will still have some preferences unsatisfied’.² Nils Holtug rejects frustrationism³—the view that while the frustration of preferences has negative value, the satisfaction of preferences simply avoids negative value and contributes nothing positive. Frustrationism implies that we harm people by bringing them intoexistence if they will have frustrated desires (which everybody has). Thus he dismisses frustrationism as ‘implausible, indeed deeply counter-intuitive’.4 Of the implication that it is ‘wrong to have a child whose life is much better than the life of anyone we know’, he says: ‘Surely, this cannot be right.’5 I now turn to the question whether it matters that my conclusions are so counter-intuitive. Are my arguments instances of reason gone mad? Should my conclusions be dismissed on account of being so eccentric? Although I understand what motivates these questions, my answer to each of them is an emphatic ‘no’. At the outset, it is noteworthy that a view’s counter-intuitiveness cannot by itself constitute a decisive consideration against it. This is because intuitions are often profoundly unreliable—a product of mere prejudice. Views that are taken to be deeply counter-intuitive in one place and time are often taken to be obviously true in another. The view that slavery is wrong, or the view that there is nothing wrong with ‘miscegenation’, were once thought to be highly implausible and counter-intuitive. They are now taken, at least in many parts of the world, to be self-evident. It is not enough, therefore, to find a view or its implications counter-intuitive, or even offensive. One has to examine the arguments for the disliked conclusion. Most of those who have rejected the view that it is wrong to create more people have done so without assessing the argument for that conclusion. They have simply assumed that this view must be false. One reason against making this assumption is that the conclusion follows from views that are not only accepted by most people but are also quite reasonable. As I explained in Chapter 2, the asymmetry of pleasure and pain constitutes the best



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explanation of a number of important moral judgements about creating new people. All my argument does is uncover that asymmetry and to show where it leads. It might be suggested, however, that my argument should be understood as a reductio ad absurdum of the commitment to asymmetry. In other words, it might be said that accepting my conclusion is more counter-intuitive than rejecting asymmetry. Thus, if one is faced with the choice between accepting my conclusion and rejecting asymmetry, the latter is preferable. There are a number of problems with this line of argument. First, we should remember just what it is to which we are committed if we reject asymmetry. Of course, there are various ways of rejecting asymmetry, but the least implausible way would be by denying that absent pleasures are ‘not bad’ and claiming instead that they are ‘bad’. This would commit us to saying that we do have a (strong?) moral reason and thus a presumptive duty, based on the interests of future possible happy people, to create those people. It would also commit us to saying that we can create a child for that child’s sake and that we should regret, for the sake of those happy people whom we could have created but did not create, that we did not create them. Finally, it would commit us not only to regretting that parts of the earth and all the rest of the universe are uninhabited, but also to regretting this out of concern for those who could otherwise have come into existence in these places. Matters become still worse if we attempt to abandon asymmetry in another way—by claming that absent pains in Scenario B are merely ‘not bad’. That would commit us to saying that we have no moral reason, grounded in the interests of a possible future suffering person, to avoid creating that person. We could no longer regret, based on the interests of a suffering child, that we created that child. Nor could we regret, for the sake of miserable people suffering in some part of the world, that they were ever created. Those who treat my argument as a reduction of asymmetry may find it easier to say that they are prepared to abandon asymmetry than actually to embrace the implications of doing so. It certainly will not suffice to say that it is better to give up asymmetry and then to proceed, in their ethical theorizing and in their practice, as though asymmetry still held. At the very least, then, my argument should force them to wrestle with the full implications of rejecting asymmetry, which extend well beyond those that I have outlined. I doubt very much that many of those who say that they would rather give up asymmetry really would abandon it. A second problem with treating my argument as a reductio of asymmetry is that although my conclusions may be counterintuitive, the dominant intuitions in this matter seem thoroughly untrustworthy. This is so for two reasons. First, why should we think that it is acceptable to cause great harm to somebody—which the arguments in Chapter 3 show we do whenever we create a child—when we could avoid doing so without depriving that person of anything? In other words, how reliable can an intuition be if, even absent the interests of others, it allows the infliction of great harm that could have been avoided without any cost to the person who is harmed? Such an intuition would not be worthy of respect in any other context. Why should it be thought to have such force only in procreative contexts? Secondly, we have excellent reason for thinking that pro-natal intuitions are the product of (at least non-rational, but possibly irrational) psychological forces. As I showed in Chapter 3, there are pervasive and powerful features of human psychology that lead people to think that their lives are better than they really are. Thus their judgements are unreliable. Moreover, there is a good evolutionary explanation for the deep-seated belief that people do not harm their children seriously by bringing them into existence. Those who do not have this belief are less likely to reproduce. Those with reproduction-enhancing beliefs are more likely to breed and pass on whatever attributes incline one to such beliefs. What is important to both of these reasons is that it is not merely my extreme claim—that coming into existence is a harm even when a life contains only an iota of suffering—that is counter-intuitive. My more moderate claim—that there is sufficient bad in all actual lives to make coming into existence a harm, even if lives with only an iota of bad would not be harmful—is also counterintuitive. If only the extreme claim ran counter to common intuitions, then these intuitions would be (somewhat) less suspect, However, then it would have to be said that my extreme claim would be more palatable if all actual lives were largely devoid of bad. This is because the claim would be primarily of theoretical interest and would have little application for procreation, given that the interests of existent people could more plausibly be thought to outweigh the harm to new people. But it is



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not merely my extreme claim that runs counter to most people’s intuitions. Most people think it is implausible that it is harmful and wrong to start lives filled with as much bad as all actual lives contain. Worse still, those who would treat my argument as a reductio of asymmetry should note that their argument could also be used by a species doomed to lives much worse than our own. Although we might see their lives as great harms, if they were subject to the kinds of optimistic psychological forces characteristic of humans they too would argue that it is counter-intuitive to claim that they were harmed by being brought into existence. That which would not be counter-intuitive from our perspective would be counter-intuitive from theirs. Yet we can see, with the benefit of some distance from their lives, that little store should be placed on their intuitions about this matter. Something similar can be said about the common human intuition that creating (most) humans is not a harm.6



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Epistemology Module

Objectively, our physical lives are intolerably awful – their evidence is rooted in a delusional epistemology.Singer ’10 (Peter, a chair in bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, 6/6, The New York Times, “Should This Be The Last Generation?”, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/should-this-be-the-last-generation/?scp=2&sq=singer&st=cse)

Benatar also argues that human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states. If we think that this is a tolerable state of affairs it is because we are, in Benatar’s view, victims of the illusion of pollyannaism. This illusion may have evolved because it helped our ancestors survive, but it is an illusion nonetheless. If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone.

Treat all their arguments with skepticism – only we provide an objective view of reality – their epistemology is flawedPhilosophy Talk ’07 (“Schopenhauer and Prozac”, 5/14, http://theblog.philosophytalk.org/2005/04/schopenauer_and.html)

Why is it so difficult to accept Schopenhauer's 'pessimistic view' of the world as being an objective one? Is it not true that life is ultimately meaningless, and all around we see people who are evil and selfish and egotistical? Do we not look on the news channel and hear about atrocities taking place every single day? If we reflect on the history of mankind has it not been nothing more than 'war of all against all' until recent decades? Perhaps you find his view 'pessimistic' because you happen to be among the minority of the human species living in the 1st world in the 21st Century? What about the rest of the world still living in abject poverty? Surely you accept he fact that one day, all your work will come to nothing, your health will fail and you will probably die after much suffering? Schopenhauer was simply giving an objective account of what life actually is about, and in his own words his philosophy provided him with much comfort. If anything, he was simply a melancholy man with a genuinely wicked sense of humour - hardly depressed!

Red flag all their author’s claims – they are deluded and studies have proven this.Benatar, David (01/2008). "The Optimism Delusion". Think : philosophy for everyone (1477-1756), 16, p. 19.

The deeply deluded will deny that life is even nearly as bad as I have suggested. Such protestations are unreliable. There are well-established features of human psychology that lead most people to underestimate how bad the quality of their lives is. Chief among these psychological features is 'pollyannaism', an inclination most people have towards optimism. Research has shown, for example, that people selectively recall the good more often than the bad, overestimate how well things will go, and tend to think that the quality of their life is above average.



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The optimistic outlook their authors promote is inaccurate and rooted in a fundamental misperception of the suffering in our worldSanderson ‘07 (Matthew Walter, PhD dissertation Southern Illinois University, “RELIGIOUS SUBLIMITY AND THE TRAGIC VIEW OF LIFE IN KANT, SCHOPENHAUER AND NIETZSCHE,” August, ProQuest)

However, this life-affirmative religious attitude is indicative, for Schopenhauer, of the very worst form of optimism. Such optimism insists that it is possible and, indeed, most desirable to view the immense suffering in the world as beautiful and justified (even if, in reality, it is not). The general problem with optimism, according to Schopenhauer, is that it is based on a superficial perspective on the world, one that surveys it from a distance instead of sympathizing with its inner being. And, as Schopenhauer points out, this superficial perspective is often the result of mistaking the redemptive dimension of aesthetic experience with redemption itself. He writes: “To this world the attempt has been made to adapt the system of optimism, and to demonstrate to us that it is the best of all possible worlds. The absurdity is glaring. However, an optimist tells me to open my eyes and look at the world and see how beautiful it is in the sunshine, with its mountains, valleys, rivers, plants, animals, and so on. But is the world, then, a peep-show? These things are certainly beautiful to behold , but to be them is something quite different ” (WWR II, 581). Think, for instance, to elaborate upon Schopenhauer’s own example, of the beauty of a lake at sunset. The beauty, however, is perceived from a distance. If one were to actually trade places with the scene one would feel all the suffering, for instance, of the animals, some of whom are perhaps dying of starvation or falling victim as prey to others. The optimism, then, that arises from aesthetic pleasure and the perception of beauty is really based on a perspective that does not truly identify with the depth of existence, as Nietzsche himself recognizes when he argues that to see the will as beautiful we must perceive it through the lens of aesthetic transfiguration.



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Answers



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A2: Extinction Causes More Short Term Suffering(Not in a world of nuclear winter – our Dolan evidence answers this argument on point – the few months of darkness it takes for all 7 billion of us to die relatively painlessly is massively outweighed by the suffering caused by continuing physical existence)Extinction is the most moral choice – the suffering prevented by it outweighs the pain that our generation would bravely faceBenatar ‘97 (David, Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Cape Town, "Why it is better never to come into existence." American Philosophical Quarterly 34.3 (1997): 345+. General OneFile.)

Even if having children is not immoral (given the presumption we might be entitled to make), my argument suggests, at the very least, that it is not morally desirable. Although our potential offspring may not regret coming into existence, they certainly would not regret not coming into existence. Since it is actually not in their interests to come into being, the morally desirable course of action is to ensure that they do not. One implication of my view is that it would be preferable for our species to die out. It would be better if there were no more people. Many people, but not I, find such a prospect inherently intolerable. Imagine that everybody entered a nonprocreation pact or even without an agreement acted on the non-procreation ideal. No more children would come into the world and the human population would age and then become extinct. There is no chance of this occurring. If our species comes to an end, it will not be because we have freely chosen to bring this about (though it may result from other freely chosen actions). Nevertheless the possibility is one which must be considered because it is a theoretical implication of

my view. I agree that there would be some aspects of the demise of humans which would be tragic. The last generation to die out would live in a world in which the structures of society had broken down. There would be no younger working generation growing the crops, preserving order, running

hospitals and homes for the aged, and burying the dead. The situation is a bleak one indeed. It is hard to know whether the suffering of the final people would be any greater than that of so many people in each generation. I doubt that it would, but let us

imagine the opposite for the moment. I have suggested (with some trepidation) that having children might not always be immoral. Assume first that this view is correct. What if, despite the permissibility of having children, people acted on the ideal, forwent having children and suffered tremendously as a result? How could

that be acceptable as a moral ideal? The first thing to note is that it would be an outcome which a generation willingly (albeit fearfully) would accept upon itself in the name of the moral ideal. It would be a supererogatory or heroic decision for people to make (especially when they knew

that all others were making it too). They would be accepting additional suffering upon themselves to spare possible future people the harm of existence. That would be something to be admired even though the consequences for the heroes would be extremely unpleasant. If we do not object to heroic sacrifice in other contexts, why should we object to it when it would prevent any further suffering? But what if the assumption that having children is permissible is mistaken? Even then we should see that if there is something tragic about the demise of humanity, it

is not the demise itself but the suffering that heralds it. I believe that people who think that the demise itself would be unfortunate would be hard-pressed to provide an explanation of this in terms of the interests of those who could have come into being. Who would there be to suffer the end of homo sapiens? One possible suggestion is that it would affect the people who knew it was going to happen. However, that would simply be another feature of the suffering that foreshadowed the end of human life.(9)

The fact that death awaits everyone alive means that coming into existence is always a serious harm.Benatar ‘97 (David, Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Cape Town, "Why it is better never to come into existence." American Philosophical Quarterly 34.3 (1997): 345+. General OneFile.)

We tend to forget how great the harms are that we all suffer. There is a strong tendency to consider how well our lives go relative to others. If we live longer and with less ill-health and greater comfort than others, we count ourselves lucky. And so we should. At the same time, however, we should not lose sight of how serious the harms we all suffer are. That people do tend to lose sight of this is one important psychological reason why many feel resistance to my conclusion



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that coming into existence is not a benefit. Many people have very little difficulty seeing why relatively poor quality lives may not be a benefit. They would have far less difficulty extending this judgment to all lives, if they really saw how great the harms are that all people suffer. Take death for example, because it is something that we all face. We consider a death at forty as tragic, but tend to be pretty casual about a death at ninety. Clearly, the latter person's life is far preferable to the former's (all other things being equal), but that does not detract from the intrinsic harm of a death at ninety. Imagine how different our evaluation would be of a death at ninety if people commonly lived to one hundred and twenty years. By contrast, there was a time when people rarely lived until their fifties. I take it that at that time living until forty was not regarded as such a tragedy.(3) It becomes clear how flexible our common evaluations are about which deaths are serious harms. My view is that all deaths are serious harms, ceteris paribus. How great the harm is relative to others or to the current norm (which itself is determined by the life-span of others) can vary, but there is a serious intrinsic tragedy in any death. That we are born destined to die is a serious harm. Not all share this view of death. One opposing perspective would see death as equivalent to pre-conception non-existence. Those who have this outlook will deny that death is a harm. They may even seek to suggest that my view suffers contradiction in that I think non-existence preferable to existence, but then see the cessation of existence as a harm. If coming into existence is a harm, how can going out of existence also be a harm? The answer is this. Whereas pre-conception non-existence or the non-existence of possible people who never become actual is not something which happens to anybody, death (the cessation of existence) is something that happens to somebody. It happens to the person who dies. Whereas Epicurus is correct that where death is, I am not and where I am, death is not, it does not follow that I have no reason to regard my death as a harm. It is, after all, the termination of me and that prospect is something that I can regret intensely.



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A2: VTL

(If value to life is inevitable then there’s no risk that the destruction of the physical organism takes it away—supercharges our physical existence bad arguments)The precautionary principle is an impact take out to all their life good and value to life claims – non-existence entails no pain of any kind while there is only a risk that living causes suffering. Even if there is value to life, it doesn’t matter because non-existence means there is no absence of the things that give life value.Doyal ‘07 (Doyal, Len [emeritus professor of medical ethics at Queen Mary, University of London and a medical ethicist] (10/2007). "Is Human Existence Worth Its Consequent Harm?". Journal of medical ethics (0306-6800), 33 (10), p. 573)

Benatar argues that it is better never to have been born because of the harms always associated with human existence. Non-existence entails no harm, along with no experience of the absence of any benefits that existence might offer. Therefore, he

maintains that procreation is morally irresponsible, along with the use of reproductive technology to have children. Women should seek termination if

they become pregnant and it would be better for potential future generations if humans become extinct as soon as humanely possible. These views are challenged by the argument that while decisions not to procreate may be rational on the grounds of the harm that might occur, it may equally rational to gamble under certain circumstances that future children would be better-off experiencing the harms and benefits of life rather than never having

the opportunity of experiencing anything. To the degree that Benatar’s arguments preclude the potential rationality of any such gamble, their moral relevance to

concrete issues concerning human reproduction is weakened. However, he is right to emphasise the importance of foreseen harm when decisions are made to attempt to have children. A popularisation of Schopenhauer at his most bleak is, “Life is a bitch and then you die”. The challenging arguments in Benatar’s1 new book, Better never to have been, confirm the emergence of another intriguing philosopher of pessimism. Forget

just the tragedy of death after a life of inevitable harm. Benatar claims that the harm experienced by all forms of conscious life is such that it is better that they had not been born in the first place. In developing his case, he focuses primarily on humans and the types of harm that

existence unavoidably holds in store for them. IS HUMAN EXISTENCE WORTH IT? One of the merits of Benatar’s analysis is its simplicity. Life is always a bitch to some extent; it always entails some degree of harm, including that of the experience of dying. Are the potential benefits of human existence ever worth the candle of such experience? According to Benatar, the answer is no. The reason is that for existers, harm

is bad and benefit is good.2i However, non-existence entails no harm (which is good) and no absence of any benefits that existers may experience (which is not bad). Thus, non-existence guarantees no harm of any kind and harm of some kind is guaranteed by existence. Note that, in arguing as much, Benatar is aware of the importance of linking the good of the absence of harm entailed by non-

existence to existing persons. He does so through arguing that since only existers suffer harm, it is better—“preferable”—for possible persons not to become actual persons and thereby have to then also have to suffer it. This view is an interesting twist on the

Epicurean argument against fear of death: once death brings non-existence, no further harm or absence of benefit can be experienced, so why worry? In developing his argument, Benatar applies the same logic to the creation of all human life, no matter how absurd he

recognises that this may seem to others. For example, he claims that if there is no absence of benefit associated with non-existence then no level of harm is sufficient to justify existence; not even a pinprick! To this degree, his argument does not depend upon the levels of harm already encountered in human life. However, he goes on to attempt to strengthen the plausibility of his logical argument through empirically documenting types and degrees of harms that even fortunate humans inevitably encounter—all of the common illnesses and anxieties associated with everyday life, as well as the often

negative experience of dying. As for the unfortunate, the levels of harm that they must endure can be unending and monumental, grinding poverty and disease along with other forms of endemic insecurity. If this were not bad enough, there is a well-documented tendency of humans to underestimate the harm in their lives and to overestimate the



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benefits. Thus, Benatar dismisses declarations that the benefits of life still outweigh its harms. He argues that they are based on wishful thinking and, as such, are not creditable evidence of the value of the benefits of life when compared to the harm.



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A2: Future GenerationsOur argument flips the nature of our responsibility to future generations; voting Aff provides an easy, humane way out for the whole planet ensuring that nobody ever has to experience the harm of existence ever again. It’s our moral duty to choose this for future generationsDoyal ‘07 (Doyal, Len [emeritus professor of medical ethics at Queen Mary, University of London and a medical ethicist] (10/2007). "Is Human Existence Worth Its Consequent Harm?". Journal of medical ethics (0306-6800), 33 (10), p. 573)

Benatar goes on to draw some provocative conclusions from his arguments concerning procreative rights, reproductive technology and abortion. On all these fronts, he turns traditional arguments on their head. Given the harm always associated with existing, there is no moral right to have children; indeed there is a duty not to have them.3 However, the lack of such a moral right should not be translated into the abolition of legal procreative rights because of the harm to existers of enforcing such laws. Benatar expresses

sympathy for lobbyists for disabled people who proclaim the prejudicial dangers of moral and judicial concepts of wrongful life. He suggests that there may be a threshold of foreseen harm that is so great that when crossed, it would be wrong to try to have children (eg, some forms of severe genetic illness). However, the able bodied should not exaggerate where this line should be drawn, rather than exploring and funding the means for minimising

related handicap. Having offered disabled people this carrot, however, Benatar then immediately retracts it. He creates a level playing field by arguing that all lives are wrongful as “no lives are worth starting”. The stage thus is set for his views on reproductive technology and abortion. For example, while the

infertile should not be legally prevented from seeking fertility treatment, this negative freedom should not be translated into the positive freedom of state provided reproductive technology, which perpetuates procreative harm. As for debates about abortion, the key issue is not whether pregnant women should have a right to choose terminations; rather it is that they should have a moral duty to do so! Again, he argues that no legal duty to have termination follows from the existence of a moral duty to have them. This is because of the countervailing harm that forced abortion would cause for women who insist on having children. However, whatever problems exist about the practical feasibility of enforcing the moral duty not to procreate, Benatar has no doubt about his preferred eventual outcome: no people, anywhere. FUTURE GENERATIONS This conclusion is explored further in the penultimate chapter on the future of the human species. Here, Benatar continues to turn traditional arguments on their head. The orthodox

question has been how many people should be brought into the world and how much variation in their quality of life is acceptable. Benatar maintains instead that the primary question is rather how best to bring about human extinction, causing the least harm in the process. In this context, he has a particularly interesting analysis of some of Derek Parfit’s views.4 Parfit rejects the notion that a poor quality of life can be deemed worse for a person than non-existence. Prior to birth, this person does not exist and therefore there is no basis for comparison. Parfit, therefore, searches for an impersonal standard by which such judgements about quality of life can be made and in the process he examines different

approaches to maximising the well-being of future generations. For example, suppose that the goal is simply to maximise the well-being of the total population in the future . This could lead to the “repugnant outcome” that it would be better to have more people with a projected lower quality of life than a smaller number of people who were better-off. Conversely, we might try to solve this problem through the goal of maximising the projected average well-being of everyone. This would lead to a smaller population with greater total well-being. Yet, it would also lead to the unacceptable conclusion that it would be better to aim for a future population of two people in bliss rather than many more who have a much smaller but still reasonable quality of life.

Benatar argues that problems like these (and others) are partly created by the failure to differentiate between the circumstances under which lives are worth continuing rather than worth starting. “If no lives are worth starting, it is not a defect in a theory that it precludes adding new lives that are not worth starting, even if those lives would be worth continuing. It would indeed have been better if no people had been added to the Edenic lives of Adam and Eve.” Not surprisingly, Benatar goes on to argue that human extinction would be a good thing. However, he does not reject humanitarian values in the process. The global spread of his antinatalism is one blueprint for the future. Yet, the phasing-out of humanity to which this would lead rather than quicker extinction through dramatic natural disaster also creates the prospect of enormous harm for the last remaining humans. Benatar confesses lack of clarity about how this could be managed humanely, especially since any intentional phasing would involve the instrumental creation and harming of some humans for the sake of the well-being of others. What is clear is the unavoidability of those who really are last being severely harmed by this knowledge and its



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practical consequences. Under such circumstances, they will probably thank no one for having been born. The implication is that if human existence could be ended by some cataclysm of monumental proportions, this would be the best outcome for current existers and those who otherwise potentially exist in the future.

Every birth is a breach of the right to nonexistence – we have an obligation not to allow life in this world of suffering. Benatar ‘6


Whether or not this is the case, there are some views that can take account of the concerns about how harms are distributed and brought about. For example, a rights or deontological view may say that some harms are so bad that they may not be inflicted even if failing to inflict them causes greater harm to others. On such a view, for example, it would be wrong to remove somebody’s healthy kidney involuntarily even though the harm to a potential recipient of not doing the transplant would be greater than the harm to the involuntary donor of doing it. This is because either the donor has a right not to have his kidney involuntarily removed, or others have a duty not to remove it involuntarily. If there is a right not to be brought into existence—a right that has a bearer only when it is breached —then it might be argued that it would be wrong to create new people even if this reduced the harm to currently existing people . Those who are worried about attributing, to non-existent beings, a right not to be brought into existence, may think of this matter instead in terms of duties not to bring people into existence. These would be duties not to inflict the harm that is inflicted by bringing people into existence. On this deontological view, there is a duty not to bring new people into existence—a duty that may not be violated even if doing so would be less than the harm suffered by existent people in the absence of new people. The idea here is that it would be wrong to create people, even if there are fewer of them, to suffer the final-people fate, in order to spare ourselves (even if there are more of us) that same fate.

There is no impact to future lives – you can’t “lose” a future life because that presupposes that the life has already be lived and is thus valuable.Williams ‘07 (Christopher, P.H.D. in philosophy, “Death and Deprivation”, Pacific Philosophy Quarterly)

A simpliste criticism of the deprivation argument now suggests itself. The first premise, as it needs to be stated for the sake of making the assignment of loss explicit, is that a future life is valuable to the person whose life it is. But any realized value presupposes the empirical realization of the life: the future life is valuable at an earlier time only if the person in fact lives through it at a later time. Since the death itself decides the issue of whether a person is to have a future at all, we cannot claim that death takes away something that the person already possessed, in advance of the deciding event. For the loss of a future in that sense is a merely hypothetical loss, once the facts about the term of life are taken into account. (Analogously, if a millionaire declines to give away a large sum of money, somebody will not be a recipient of the gift, but nobody will be deprived of it.) The second premise of the deprivation argument is therefore untrue.



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A2: Science gives meaning to lifeTrying to give life value through science is just as pointless as doing so through religion. It’s more likely that our lives are just devoid of meaning.Benatar, David (01/2008). "The Optimism Delusion". Think : philosophy for everyone (1477-1756), 16, p. 19.

He speaks rapturously about the 'feeling of awed wonder that science can give us', saying that it 'is one of the highest experiences of

which the human psyche is capable'. Yet this secular equivalent of religious awe is no guarantor of life's meaningfulness. It is no proof that a Godless world is a meaningful one. Just because the universe and human life lack the meaning that theists often say a God would bestow on them, does not mean that the void has to be filled by some secular alternative. It might simply be the case that our lives are pointless. To ward off this conclusion, Professor Dawkins makes the common suggestion that one's life is 'as meaningful, as full and as wonderful' as one chooses to make it. But that assumes that subjective meaning is the only meaning our lives require. However, if that were the case, then a religious life could have immense meaning even when it is founded on delusions - because such lives too are 'as meaningful, as full and as wonderful' as the people living them choose to make them. It is one kind of delusion to think that one's life has meaning because it fits in with God's plan when, in fact, there is no God. It is another kind of delusion to think that one's life has meaning because it fits in with one's own plan when, in fact, one is mistaken that one's own plan can endow (the right kind of) meaning.



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AT: Rawls

In an ethical world, the ideal population is zero. Rawlsian justice means we should do our best to bring no people into existence. Benatar ‘6 (David, Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Cape Town, Better Never to Have Been, pg 180)

Whether contractarianism³ could provide guidance about how many people there should be is a matter of dispute. Derek Parfit thinks that it cannot fulfil this function. On the ideal contractarian view, principles of justice are chosen in what John Rawls calls the ‘original position ’— a hypothetical position in which impartiality is ensured by denying parties in the position knowledge of particular facts about themselves. The problem, however, says Derek Parfit, is that parties in the original position must know that they exist. But to assume, when choosing principles that affect future people, that we shall certainly exist, he says, ‘is like assuming, when choosing a principle that would disadvantage women, that we shall certainly be men’.³¹ This is a problem because it is essential to ideal contractarianism ‘that we do not know whether we would bear the brunt of some chosen principle’.³² Now the problem with this objection to contractarianism is that the analogy does not hold, and it does not hold because only existers can ‘bear the brunt’ of any principle. A principle that results in some possible people never becoming actual does not impose any costs on those people. Nobody is disadvantaged by not coming into existence . Rivka Weinberg makes the same point in a different way. She says that ‘existence is not a distributable benefit’ and thus neither ‘people in general nor individuals in particular will be disadvantaged by the assumption of an existent perspective’.³³ Those who are unsatisfied with this response might wish to consider whether the original position could be altered in such a way that parties to it do not know whether they will exist. Derek Parfit thinks that such a change cannot be made. This, he says, is because while we ‘can imagine a different possible history, in which we never existed . . . we cannot assume that, in the actual history of the world, it might be true that we never exist’.³4 But it is not clear to me why this explains why possible people cannot be parties to the original position. Why must parties in the original position be people in ‘the actual history of the world’? Why can we not imagine instead that they are possible people? Some may object that it is metaphysically too fanciful to think of possible people inhabiting an original position. However, the whole point about the original position is that it is a hypothetical position, not an actual one. Why might we not imagine hypothetical people inhabiting a hypothetical position? Professor Rawls’s theory is intended to be ‘political not metaphysical’³5 and the original position, he emphasized, is but an expository device to determine fair principles of justice. These are principles that it would be rational to adopt were we truly impartial. What size population would be produced by principles chosen by parties in the original position? This obviously depends on a variety of features of the original position. If we admit possible people to the original position, but hold constant all other features of that position, as Professor Rawls describes it, we find that the chosen principles would produce my ideal population—zero. Professor Rawls says that parties to the original position would maximize the position of the worst off —that is, they would maximize the minimum—so-called ‘maximin’. Many writers agree that when applied to questions of population size, this would imply that there should be no people .³6 This is because, as long as procreation continues, some of those people who are brought into being will lead lives that are not worth living (read ‘worth continuing’). The only way to improve their position is not to bring such people into existence, and the only way to guarantee that such people are not brought into existence is not to bring anybody into existence.



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Future generations are best served by preventing their existence.Häyry ’04 (Matti, Professor of Bioethics and Philosophy of Law @ the University of Manchester + Adjunct Professor of Practical Philosophy @ the University of Helsinki, June, Human Fertility, “If you must make babies, then at least make the best babies you can?”, http://www.helsinki.fi/collegium/english/staff/Hayry/2004%20HF%20If%20You%20Must%20Make%20Babies.pdf)

The idea of generosity, or the ‘‘gift of life’’, also runs into difficulties in the modern world. For one thing, a vast proportion of the earth’s population live in very poor conditions. Can someone really stand up and demand the gratitude of, say, children dying of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in Africa? And in more affluent parts of the world, some individuals with disabilities have contested the worth of their own existence. They claim that their parents have been criminally negligent to bring about their ‘‘wrongful lives’’. These are clearly cases in which the gift of life is not too well received (Feinberg, 1992; Benatar, 2000). These observations do not refute the basis of the generosity argument in an ideal world—it might be good to produce

more good lives. But they do cast doubt over its application in the real world. As long as human reproduction can produce unnecessary suffering, the idea of the gift of life is more difficult to accept. A specific case against making babies It seems, then, that human reproduction is sometimes, but not always, a good thing. The question is, what should be deduced from this modest intermediary result? One possibility is to take a step further and

argue that people should not have children at all. The notions of safety, avoidance of risk, and prevention of unnecessary suffering could be used to

defend this solution. The logic would be the following: If people decide not to have children, they will not harm anyone. No one is born, and no one is harmed. The result, in terms of good and bad, is zero. If, on the contrary, people decide to have children, the lives of their children can be good or bad. If they are good, the parents are lucky. But if they are bad, the parents bring about unnecessary suffering. So if people who think about having children want to avoid risks, which is a perfectly sound form of rationality (Luce and Raiffa, 1957; Rawls, 1972), they should settle for the zero result, and not have children at all (Ha¨yry, in press).



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A2: Compassion

Pitying the suffering of humanity allows for compassionSchopenhauer (re-translated in) 04. (Arthur, quals are life-affirming, “On Human Nature”, http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/human/complete.html)

But apart from this circular argument it seems to me that the idea of dignity can be applied only in an ironical sense to a being whose will is so sinful, whose intellect is so limited, whose body is so weak and perishable as man’s. How shall a man be proud, when his conception is a crime, his birth a penalty, his life a labour, and death a necessity!— Quid superbit homo? cujus conceptio culpa, Nasci poena, labor vita, necesse mori! Therefore, in opposition to the above-mentioned form of the Kantian principle, I should be inclined to lay down the following rule: When you come into contact with a man, no matter whom, do not attempt an objective appreciation of him according to his worth and dignity. Do not consider his bad will, or his narrow understanding and perverse ideas; as the former may easily lead you to hate and the latter to despise him; but fix your attention only upon his sufferings, his needs, his anxieties, his pains. Then you will always feel your kinship with him; you will sympathise with him; and instead of hatred or contempt you will experience the commiseration that alone is the peace to which the Gospel calls us. The way to keep down hatred and contempt is certainly not to look for a man’s alleged “dignity,” but, on the contrary, to regard him as an object of pity.

We solve for compassion better than them – voting for us is to act in the best interest of the other, and share in the suffering of humanity.Cartwright, David E (08/2008). "Compassion and Solidarity with Sufferers: The Metaphysics of Mitleid". European journal of philosophy (0966-8373), 16 (2), p. 292.

Schopenhauer believes he has demonstrated that 'only insofar as an action has sprung from compassion does it have moral worth; and every action resulting from any other motive has none' (BM 144/208f). He describes compassion itself as ' … the immediate participation [unmittelbare Teilnahme], independent of all ulterior considerations, primarily in the suffering of another, and thus in the prevention or elimination of it; for all satisfaction and well-being and happiness consists in this … As soon as this compassion is aroused, the weal and woe of another are nearest to my heart in exactly the same way, although not always in exactly the same degree, as otherwise only my own are. Hence the difference between him and me is now no longer absolute' (ibid.). This phenomenon requires, he argues, that the others' weal and woe become the motive for my action just as if it were my own weal and woe. This is only possible, he holds, that in the case of another's suffering 'I suffer directly with him [ich bei seinem Wehe als solchem geradezu mit leide], I feel his woe just as I ordinarily feel only my own; and, likewise, I directly desire his weal in the same way I otherwise desire only my own' (BM 143/208). In compassionating another, Schopenhauer holds, I treat another's suffering as normally I treat my own—I act to prevent or relieve it. Since he holds the odd thesis here that all satisfaction, well-being, and happiness consists in the prevention or elimination of suffering, Schopenhauer immediately connects compassion to the pursuit of another's well-being.8



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To be truly compassionate we must be willing to make sacrifices to ensure the other suffers less. My partner and I are net more compassionate than our opponents because we realize that even though we enjoy our lives and are relatively happy, this does not outweigh the unquantifiable misery other people may face. The other and I are one and the same, to allow the other to suffer is to suffer myself.Cartwright, David E (08/2008). "Compassion and Solidarity with Sufferers: The Metaphysics of Mitleid". European journal of philosophy (0966-8373), 16 (2), p. 292.

Schopenhauer, however, does none of these things. Instead, when he turns to Section 22, 'Metaphysical Foundation', he examines what he claimed to be essential to the characters of good and evil persons. Good characters, those expressing the virtues of justice and loving kindness, make less of a distinction between themselves and others than do evil characters, those that express extreme egoism or malice. The good person will go as far as sacrificing him or herself to save others, whereas the egoist will inflict great harm on others for a small, personal gain , while the malicious person delights in another's misery without any further personal advantage. Schopenhauer summarizes this difference between good and evil characters by claiming that the former treats other egos like their own, whereas the latter treats others as nonegos. This leads him to ask '… whether … the relation between one's own ego and another's, which is the basis of the actions of a good character, is mistaken and due to a delusion, or whether such is rather the case with the opposite conception on which egoism and malice are based' (BM 205/266).14 Schopenhauer contends that the evil character's standpoint is strictly justified from an empirical perspective, since according to experience, space and time separates individuals from each other and from each other's weal and woe. Thus it seems as if there is an insuperable abyss between individuals, and it appears that evil characters are warranted in viewing others as nonegos. Appearances, however, are metaphysically deceiving. From a phenomenological stance, Schopenhauer argues, we cannot conclude that others are absolutely nonegos. Through the outer sense, we experience our bodies and those of others as spatial and temporal objects standing in causal relationships. Through our inner sense we are aware of ourselves as a continuous series of acts of will. But '… that which wills and

cognizes is not accessible to us. We see only outward; within it is dark and obscure' (BM 206/267). For this reason, he claimed, we lack complete and exhaustive knowledge of ourselves; we remain riddles to ourselves. He then evokes Kant: 'As Kant put it, the ego [Ich] knows itself only as appearance, not according to what it might be in itself' (ibid.). Due to this unknown dimension of ourselves, it is possible, Schopenhauer concludes, that this unknown dimension of each individual could be one and identical in all. Because of this possibility, we cannot conclude that others are absolutely nonegos.



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A2: Optimism

Optimism is ethically bankrupt and forces us to deny the sufferings of the world.Sanderson ‘07 (Matthew Walter, PhD dissertation Southern Illinois University, “RELIGIOUS SUBLIMITY AND THE TRAGIC VIEW OF LIFE IN KANT, SCHOPENHAUER AND NIETZSCHE,” August, ProQuest)

Nonetheless, the ultimate problem with optimism – especially the optimism born of aesthetic experience – is not simply that it is descriptively inaccurate, but also, according to Schopenhauer, that it is ethically insensitive and inhumane. As he writes, “…I cannot here withhold the statement that optimism….seems to me to be not merely an absurd, but also a really wicked, way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the unspeakable sufferings of mankind” (WWR I, 326). For Schopenhauer, then, one ought to believe, for instance, that no amount of happiness can outweigh even the smallest suffering because it is the truth, but also, and more importantly, because it is more compassionate. This is why Schopenhauer calls optimism “a false and pernicious doctrine” (WWR II, 584). For to be an optimist, on Schopenhauer’s account, is not simply to fail to acknowledge all of the suffering in the world but also to, in some sense, outright deny it. And denying that suffering exists, according to Schopenhauer, is to do more than to lack compassion for the suffering of others; it is also to mock their suffering and even insist that it does not exist in the first place, by insisting, for instance, that suffering happens for a reason, or that suffering is outweighed by beauty. But, according to both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, suffering is precisely that for which the aesthetic is supposed to provide genuine redemption; however, Nietzsche recommends a form of sublimity, because it is the most life-affirmative, that merely offers the semblance of justification rather than removing or truly justifying human suffering. In this way, Nietzsche’s aesthetic optimism blinds him to the very problem that the aesthetic is intended to solve.

Appealing to the greater good and optimism serves only to blind us to the unrelenting pain of existence and condemn those around us to suffering.Wicks, Robert (08/2008). "Natural Beauty and Optimism in Schopenhauer's Aesthetics". European journal of philosophy (0966-8373), 16 (2), p. 273.

Schopenhauer surprisingly characterizes both versions of this optimistic line of reasoning—one that, in the second version above, bears a close similarity to the teleological argument for God's existence—as a 'wicked way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the unspeakable sufferings of humanity' (WWR I 326). To see why he does so, let us consider an image that captures the spirit of Schopenhauer's charge. Imagine someone who, on a remarkably beautiful day and in a normally healthy condition, is standing in the midst of a battlefield strewn with hundreds of wounded and dying people, whose attention is dominated, not empathetically by their combined pain, but aesthetically by the sunny, morning sky, the passing clouds, the warm breeze, the light mist hanging over the fields, the surrounding springtime flowers, and the bubbling brook, and who is inspired by this overwhelming natural beauty to believe that despite the horror before his or her eyes, the eventual course of human society will somehow reveal that the war's devastation is justified. The person then proceeds to help the wounded, filled with a strong confidence and metaphysical comfort, convinced that all is basically well with the world. 6 The Schopenhauerian criticism would be that the optimistic assurance of being a participant in the supreme moral task that natural beauty can inspire, or of simply feeling the magnificent presence of the infinite universe here and now, conflicts with the screaming horror and subjective reality of those who are in excruciating pain. Whether one is immersed immediately in nature's infinite expanse as a nature mystic or pantheist, or



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whether one is more future-oriented and convinced that all evils will be morally justified and reconciled in an upcoming social unity, Schopenhauer's remarks imply that such attitudes undermine a person's ability to empathize realistically with the suffering that exists, since the compensatory greater good or alternatively, greater mystical consolation, that one projects, renders the suffering less terrible by absorbing it into a more positively-valued, cosmic whole.

Optimism is evil and predicated off the false notion that life is something that can be enjoyed.Margrieta, Beer, (2008). Schopenhauer (1-4051-3480-1, 978-1-4051-3480-4).

Man’s real existence is only in the present, and the present is slipping ever into the past. There is thus a constant transition into death. The future is quite uncertain, and always short. Our existence, therefore, is a constant hurrying of the present into the dead past, a constant dying. On the physical side, the life of the body is but an ever-postponed death. In the end death must conquer, and he only plays for a little with his prey before he swallows it up. With such intensity did Schopenhauer feel that pessimism was the only possible conclusion, that he maintained that optimism was not only absurd, but really a wicked way of thought. For optimism is a bitter mockery of the unspeakable suffering of humanity. He revolted against the theory of Leibnitz, who maintained that this is the best of all possible worlds. It is, on the contrary, he declared, the worst of all possible worlds. Optimism is at bottom the unmerited self-praise of the will to live, the real originator of the world, which views itself complacently in its works. It is not only a false, but also a pernicious doctrine. For it presents life to us as a desirable condition, and happiness as its end. Everyone believes that he has a just claim to happiness and pleasure, and if these do not fall to his lot, he believes that he is wronged. It is far more correct to regard misery and suffering, crowned by death, as the end of our life, for it is these which lead to the denial of the will to live. It is difficult to conceive how men can deceive themselves and be persuaded that life is there to be thankfully enjoyed, and that man exists in order to be happy. The constant illusion and disillusion seem intended to awaken the conviction, that nothing at all is worth our striving, our efforts, or our struggles, and that all good things are but empty vanity. The truth is, he says, we ought to be wretched and we are.



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A2: Pessimism Bad

Optimism is unfounded – it is ridiculous to ‘count our blessings’ or ‘affirm life’ out of a desperate faith in a positive view of the world. Don’t put ideology before cold hard reality. Benatar ‘6


By most accounts, the views I have defended in this book are rather pessimistic. Pessimism, like optimism, can mean different things, of course.8 One kind of pessimism or optimism is about the facts. Here pessimists and optimists disagree about what is or will be the case. Thus, they might disagree about whether there is more pleasure or pain in the world at any given time or about whether some person will or will not recover from cancer. A second kind of pessimism and optimism is not about the facts, but about an evaluation of the facts. Here pessimists and optimists disagree not about what is or will be the case, but instead about whether what is or will be the case is good or bad. An optimist of this kind might agree with the pessimist, for example, that there is more pain than pleasure, but think that the pain is worth the pleasure. Alternatively, the pessimist might agree with the optimist that there is more pleasure than pain, but deny that even that quantity of pleasure is worth the pain. The ‘is or will be’ clause in both the factual and evaluative versions refers to a third distinction, but one that obviously cuts across the first two. Very often pessimism and optimism are understood to be future-oriented—to refer to assessments of how things will be. However, both terms are also sometimes used in either a non-future-oriented or alternatively a timeless sense. The view that coming into existence is always a serious harm is pessimistic in both a factual and evaluative sense. I have suggested, factually, that human life contains much more pain (and other negative things) than people realize. Evaluatively, I have endorsed the asymmetry of pleasure and pain and suggested that whereas life’s pleasures do not make life worth starting, life’s pains do make life not worth starting. In future-oriented terms, my view is pessimistic in most ways but could be construed as optimistic in one way. Given how much suffering occurs every minute, there is very good reason to think that there will be much more suffering before sentient life comes to an end, although I cannot predict with any certainty just how much more suffering there will be . All things being equal, the longer sentient life continues, the more suffering there will be. However, there is an optimistic spin on my view, as I noted in Chapter 6. Humanity and other sentient life will eventually come to an end. For those who judge the demise of humanity to be a bad thing, the prediction that this is what will occur is a pessimistic one. By contrast, combining my evaluation that it would be better if there where no

more people with the prediction that there will come a time when there will be no more people yields an optimistic assessment. Things are bad now, but they will not always be bad. On the other hand, again, if one thinks that the better state of affairs will be a long time in coming, then one could characterize the view that it is far off as pessimistic. Pessimism tends not to be well received. On account of the psychological dispositions to think that things are better than they are, which I discussed in Chapter 3, people want to hear positive messages. They want to hear that things are better than they think, not worse. Indeed, where there is not a pathologizing of pessimism by placing it under the rubric of ‘depression’, there is often an impatience with or condemnation of it. Some people

will have these reactions to the view that coming into existence is always a harm. These optimists will dismiss this view as weak and self-indulgent. They may tell us that we cannot ‘cry over spilled milk’. We have already come into existence and there is no use bemoaning that fact in lugubrious self-pitying.Wemust ‘count our blessings’, ‘make the most of life’, ‘take pleasure’, and ‘look on the bright side’. There are good reasons not to be intimidated by the optimist’s chidings. First, optimism cannot be the right view merely because it is cheery, just as pessimism cannot be the right view merely because it is grim. Which view we adopt must depend on the evidence. I have argued in this book that a grim view about coming into existence is the right one. Secondly, one can regret one’s existence without being self-pitying. This is not to say that there is

anything wrong with a modicum of self-pity. If one pities others, why should one not pity oneself, at least in moderation? In any event, the view I have defended is not only self-regarding but also other-regarding in its relevance. It provides a basis not only for regretting one’s own existence but also for not having children. In other words, it has relevance for milk that has not yet been spilled and need not ever be spilled. Thirdly, there is nothing in my view that suggests we should not ‘count our blessings’ if by this one means that one should be pleased that one’s life is not still worse than it is. A few of us are very lucky relative to much of



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the species. There is no harm—andthere may be benefits—in recognizing this. But the injunction to count one’s blessings is much less compelling when it entails deceiving oneself into thinking that one was actually lucky to have come into existence. It is like being grateful that one is in a first-class cabin on the Titanic as one awaits descent to one’s watery grave. It may be better to die in first-class than in steerage, but not so much better as to count oneself very lucky. Nor does my view preclude our making the most of life or taking pleasure whenever we can (within the constraints of morality). I have argued that our lives are very bad. There is no reason why we should not try to make them less so, on condition that we do not spread the suffering (including the harm of existence). Finally, the optimist’s impatience with or condemnation of pessimism often has a smug macho tone to it (although males have no monopoly of it). There is a scorn for the perceived weakness of the pessimist who should instead ‘grin and bear it’. This view is defective for the same reason that macho views about other kinds of suffering are defective. It is an indifference to or inappropriate denial of suffering, whether one’s own or that of others. The injunction to ‘look on the bright side’ should be greeted with a large dose of both scepticism and cynicism. To insist that the bright side is always the right side is to put ideology before the evidence. Every cloud, to change metaphors, may have a silver lining, but it may very often be the cloud rather than the lining on which one should focus if one is to avoid being drenched by self-deception. Cheery optimists have a much less realistic view of themselves than do those who are depressed.9 Optimists might respond that even if I am right that coming into existence is always a harm it is better not to dwell on this fact, for to dwell on it only compounds the harm by making one miserable. There is an element of truth here. However, we need to put it in perspective. An acute sense of regret about one’s own existence is probably the most effective way to avoid inflicting that same harm on others. If people are able to recognize the

harm of having come into existence but still remain cheery without slipping into the practice of making new people, their cheer should not be begrudged. However, if their cheer comes at the cost of self-deception and resultant procreation, then they are susceptible to a charge of having lost perspective. They may be happier than others, but that does not make them right.



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A2: We’re All Atoms

We’re not just a chain of atoms—quantum physics and multiverse theory shows that life has non-linear dimensionality and doesn’t go away at death.Lanza 2010 (Robert Lanza is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is currently Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. "Do You Only Live Once? Experiments Suggest Life Not One-Time Deal" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/do-you-only-live-once-exp_b_508440.html)

We think we die and rot into the ground, and thus must squeeze everything in before it's too late. If life -- yours, mine -- is a just a one-time deal, then we're as likely to be screwed as pampered. But experiments suggest this view of the world may be wrong. The results of quantum physics confirm that observations can't be predicted absolutely. Instead, there's a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the "many-worlds" interpretation, states that there are an infinite number of

universes (the "multiverse"). Everything that can possibly happen occurs in some universe. The old mechanical -- "we're just a bunch of atoms" −- view of life loses its grip in these scenarios. Biocentrism extends this idea, suggesting that life is a flowering and adventure that transcends our ordinary linear way of thinking. Although our individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the "me'' feeling is just energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn't go away at death. One of the surest principles of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. When we die, we do so not in the random billiard ball matrix but in the

inescapable life matrix. Life has a non-linear dimensionality −- it's like a perennial flower that returns to bloom in the multiverse.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/do-you-only-live-once-exp_b_508440.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/do-you-only-live-once-exp_b_508440.html


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A2: Extinction Different

It is impossible to experience non-existence – the human race could have been wiped out hundreds of times in various potential worlds and we would never know. Life can’t be destroyed.Lanza 2010 (Robert Lanza is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is currently Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. "Does Death Exist?: Life Is Forever, Says Theory" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-death-exist-life-is_b_410306.html)

When you lose a loved one, you can't imagine a happy ending. But consider: you and I, indeed the entire human species could have been wiped out like the Neanderthals a hundred times over. Whether it's flipping the switch in the Science experiment or falling out a tree, it's the 20-watts of energy that will experience the result in the multiverse. But by definition, you can't experience nonexistence (you'll always seem to be alive, now, on top of time). After Bugs gets blown up, there's a moment when you think he's dead. But the show always continues. Likewise, according to Biocentrism, consciousness can't be extinguished in a timeless, spaceless world. That's why you're here despite the preposterous odds against it. Bottom line: you may get flattened now and then, but life can't be stamped out. Last year, Dennis' son scored a touchdown at the football game. Dennis and the other parents went wild. Remember, the silly rabbit never dies.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-death-exist-life-is_b_410306.html


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A/T: Empathy/Ethics

Death should not be considered an ethical question—the physical world is a prison and a false sense of empathy can only damage our perception.Lanza 2009 (Robert Lanza is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is currently Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. "Does Death Exist? New Theory Says 'No'", http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-death-exist-new-theo_b_384515.html)

This was clear with the death of my sister Christine. After viewing her body at the hospital, I went out to speak with family members. Christine's husband - Ed - started to sob uncontrollably. For a few moments I felt like I was transcending the provincialism of time. I thought about the 20-watts of energy, and about experiments that show a single particle can pass through two holes at the same time. I could not dismiss the conclusion: Christine was both alive and dead, outside of time . Christine had had a hard life. She had finally found a man that she loved very much. My younger sister couldn't make it to her wedding because she had a card game that had been scheduled for several weeks. My mother also couldn't make the wedding due to an important engagement she had at the Elks Club. The wedding was one of the most important days in Christine's life. Since no one else from our side of the family showed, Christine asked me to walk her down the aisle to give her away. Soon after the wedding, Christine and Ed were driving to the dream house they had just bought when their car hit a patch of black ice. She was thrown from the car and landed in a banking of snow. "Ed," she said "I can't feel my leg." She never knew that her liver had been ripped in half and blood was rushing into her peritoneum. After the death of his son, Emerson wrote "Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature." Whether it's flipping the switch for the Science experiment, or turning the driving wheel ever so slightly this way or that way on black-ice, it's the 20-watts of energy that will experience the result. In some cases the car will swerve off the road, but in other cases the car will continue on its way to my sister's dream house. Christine had recently lost 100 pounds, and Ed had bought her a surprise pair of diamond earrings. It's going to be hard to wait, but I know Christine is going to look fabulous in them the next time I see her.



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Specific Arg Blocks



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A2: Pyzczynski

The terror management theory their Pyszczynski references is flawed---terror doesn’t dictate all human action and isn’t necessary to maintain value to lifeProulx ’03 (Travis, University of British Colombia, “ABSURDITY AS THE SOURCE OF EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY A CRITIQUE OF TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY”, p.5)

But he remains highly sceptical of The rather bold claim that terror management is the source of all motives. As noted, their arguments on this score are interesting, sometimes ingenious, but open to dispute and therefore not very convincing. (p50) In a similar critique, psychological theorist Roy Baumeister (1997) takes issue with TMT's claim that all other motives derive from self-preservation, which they call the 'master motive'. We can readily agree that some behaviour is oriented toward staying alive. But all? There is a large gap between the empirical findings reported by Pyszczynski et al. and their theoretical claims. Their studies, of which we are both admirers, have shown in many ways that reminding people of death can alter their behaviour. But these findings fall far short of justifying the sweeping assertion that all motivation is derived from the fear of death, (p. 37) In yet another TMT critique, social psychologist Melvin Lerner (1997) finds that The research that Pyszczynski, Solomon and Greenberg have done, stimulated by their 'Terror Management Theory' (TMT), is unquestionably very impressive. However, the scope of their integrating theoretical speculations is so encompassing as to be difficult for me, and possibly for others, to accept, (p. 29) These sentiments are also echoed in social psychologist Brett Pelham's (1997) article "Human Motivation has Multiple Roots" Pyszczynski, Solomon and Greenberg propose an integrative model of human motivation. Their thesis is that the primary human motives explored in previous research are all rooted in the more fundamental motive to minimize the existential terror that is brought about by the realization that one will someday die. Although I applaud both the empirical research on terror management, and the author's theoretical goal of providing an integrative theory for understanding human motivation, my interpretation of the existing research on terror management is that a convincing case has not been made for the author's position. It seems unlikely that the management of existential terror is the quintessential human motive, (p. 44) There are two general strategies for attacking TMT's reductionist claims. The first is to point out that until TMT can truly put its money where its mouth is, that is to say, actually examine the effect of 'mortality salience' on all human behaviour with regard to all meaning systems and all facets of culture, their reductionist claims shouldn't be made to begin with. As Lerner suggests, A convincing demonstration that the management of terror is at the top of the hierarchy of human motives would involve a demonstration that mortality salience manipulations have a more dramatic effect on all kinds of defensive reactions than do any other meaningful kinds of threat. This, of course, is a very tall order, (p.32)



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Our death good arguments link turn this---reckless, immoral, and suicidal behavior proves we find value in dangerous actions Proulx ’03 (Travis, University of British Colombia, “ABSURDITY AS THE SOURCE OF EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY A CRITIQUE OF TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY”, p.5)

Yet even in lieu of such a global demonstration of TMT, other critics question the face validity of any theory that attempts to reduce all human motivation to a single drive, particularly a drive to avoid existential anxiety, where we can immediately cite examples of behaviours and motivations that seem unlikely to be rooted in a desire to avoid the negative affect that results from awareness of our own mortality. Pelham points out that intuitively, human beings are involved in myriad behaviours that are difficult, if not impossible to account for in TMT terms. People commit suicide, engage in unsafe sex, snort cocaine, smoke tobacco, drink and drive, skydive, scuba dive, and even eat foods high in sugar and cholesterol. Presumably, people engage in these potentially self-destructive behaviours because doing so fulfills basic needs and desires that are independent of, and sometimes antithetical to, the desire to avoid existential anxiety, (p. 45) On the face of it, suicidal behaviour seems to pose the greatest challenge to TMT's radical reduction, for as Lerner suggests, How basic can the fear of death be if so many people have had serious fantasies of ending their miseries by ending their lives, and if so many of them have acted on those fantasies? (p. 30) Certainly there are eventualities we fear more than death, fates so terrible that death is in fact a preferred means of avoiding these sufferings. As C. R. Snyder (1997) points out in "Control and Application of Occam's Razor to Terror Management Theory", In instances when the attempts at alleviating suffering are unsuccessful or unavailable, people may rationally seek to end their lives actively or passively. For the person with a terminal illness who is racked with abject pain, the ultimate horror is not the loss of life suggested by TMT, but its continuation, (p. 49) Few would deny that individuals have chosen to die rather than live on if their existence is characterized by hopeless torment. Yet it makes little sense to suggest, as TMT must, that anyone has committed suicide to avoid the terror that results from the awareness that we are going to die. As Baumeister suggests, To commit suicide as an escape from emotional distress only makes sense if the root of that distress is something other than death. In short, the case of suicide is alone sufficient grounds to question and probably to reject the claims of TMT that self-preservation is the master motive toward which all behaviour oriented and to which all other motives are subservient, (p. 37)



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A2: Nietzsche (Suffering and Struggle Good)

Affirming physical life causes infinite torture and forces us to endure suffering that no human can bear.Wicks 02. (Robert, The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 23 (2002), “Schopenhauerian Moral Awareness as a Source of Nietzschean Nonmorality”. 21-38)

Schopenhauer does develop this reflection in part, for he observes that if one "affirms life" with all of one's strength, the consequence is to locate oneself in a condition of virtually infinite torture (which would include the sufferings involving any guilt that a torturer might feel): "According to the true nature of things, everyone has all the sufferings of the world as his own; indeed, he has to look upon all merely possible sufferings as actual for him, so long as he is the firm and constant will-to-live, in other words affirms life with all his strength" (italics added). 11 In this thought, nonetheless, we continue to see emphasized the Christian [End Page 25] dimension of Schopenhauer's universal empathy, for it here has the effect of transforming people into Christ-like figures, who take on as their own all the sins of the world. Within the context of addressing the distinction between Schopenhauer's and Nietzsche's views, what is intriguing is that this Christ-like mentality arises, supposedly, when one "affirms life" with all of one's strength. Absolute life-affirmation—the kind of awareness Nietzsche advocates —thus generates an awareness that takes virtually infinite strength to bear, since infinite suffering is, more or less, unbearable for any finite human being. 12

Nietzsche would vote for us – it’s better to have never beenSanderson ‘07 (Matthew Walter, PhD dissertation Southern Illinois University, “RELIGIOUS SUBLIMITY AND THE TRAGIC VIEW OF LIFE IN KANT, SCHOPENHAUER AND NIETZSCHE,” August, ProQuest)

There is no question that the Nietzsche of The Birth of Tragedy embraces Schopenhauer’s pessimism and concludes that life is not worth living. For instance, Nietzsche writes that if one looks “truly into the essence of things” one will gain “true knowledge, an insight into the horrible truth” that the world is “out of joint;” one will see, he says, “everywhere only the horror or absurdity of existence” (BT, 60). Nietzsche insists that a good look at the tragic and one will be led necessarily to conclude that, for each individual, here paraphrasing what he calls ‘the tragic wisdom of Silenus:’ “’What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is – to die soon’” (BT, 42). However, with the exception of one small remark – where he refers to “the spasms of the agitations of the will” (BT, 118) – for Nietzsche, the problem of existence does not lie in willing and the lack of final satisfaction available in life. Unlike Schopenhauer, who focuses on the psychological suffering of willing individuals, Nietzsche instead emphasizes the horrors associated with natural existence.



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Nietzsche gets Schopenhauer wrong – pessimism is key to providing a way to cope with sufferingSanderson ‘07 (Matthew Walter, PhD dissertation Southern Illinois University, “RELIGIOUS SUBLIMITY AND THE TRAGIC VIEW OF LIFE IN KANT, SCHOPENHAUER AND NIETZSCHE,” August, ProQuest)

Schopenhauer improves upon Kant by interpreting the sublime, not as the affirmation of reason’s sovereignty, but rather as symbolic of an ultimate will-less state transcendent to the empirical reality of the tragic. From Nietzsche’s perspective, however, Schopenhauer is guilty along with Kant of corrupting his theory of the sublime by introducing morality into it rather than treating the sublime as a purely aesthetic phenomenon. Specifically, according to Nietzsche, Schopenhauer passes moral judgment on nature, declaring nature immoral – in the sense that it behaves in a cruel and indifferent manner towards humanity – and therefore concluding that sublimity cannot be in nature. While I believe that Nietzsche’s insight regarding the presuppositions of Schopenhauer’s theory is correct, I nevertheless defend Schopenhauer’s moral evaluation of nature. In other words, I argue that Schopenhauer’s pessimism is defensible, not merely because it is descriptively accurate, but perhaps more importantly because it is justified for ethical and existential reasons. In particular, I believe Schopenhauer is correct to argue that a life of nothing more than death-bound suffering can amount only to meaninglessness and despair. Nietzsche himself agrees with Schopenhauer on this point; however, Nietzsche chooses to believe that this life is worth living in order to avoid what he sees as the nihilism of will- less salvation. As I argue, however, Nietzsche is wrong to conclude that the latter is nihilistic, and furthermore his aesthetic religion of tragedy is inadequate to satisfy humanity’s need for genuine religious comfort.

Their evidence assumes a gross misinterpretation of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche’s philosophy – Nietzsche, like Schopenhauer, concludes the way to escape the meaningless of existence is resignation and the denial of the individual willSanderson ‘07 (Matthew Walter, PhD dissertation Southern Illinois University, “RELIGIOUS SUBLIMITY AND THE TRAGIC VIEW OF LIFE IN KANT, SCHOPENHAUER AND NIETZSCHE,” August, ProQuest)

While Schopenhauer values aesthetic experience (and, especially, the sublime) as a means of escaping existence, Nietzsche argues that tragedy’s value consists in the fact that it takes us deeper into existence, unconditionally embracing and affirming it. Thus, Robert Wicks writes that the principal difference between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche is that “Schopenhauer identified a state of non-individuation located metaphysically beyond the world altogether, whereas Nietzsche characterized a state of non-individuation that is more earth-centered, and that is accessible as the awareness of universal ‘life itself’ in Dionysic ecstasy.”91 This is, of course, an almost universally accepted understanding of where and how the two thinkers part ways: whereas Schopenhauer says ‘no’ to life, Nietzsche says ‘yes.’ This view, however, is a gross oversimplification of the immensely complex relationship between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. In particular, it is important to note that, specific to our discussion, this view obscures the important points of agreement between their respective conceptions of the religious value of the sublime. Thus, as Wicks himself admits, “Although Nietzsche intended to develop a life-affirming view in The Birth of Tragedy , his conception of life-affirmation bears close affinities to the more escapist aesthetic and ascetic modes of consciousness that Schopenhauer described as transcending, rather than directly facing, the world of daily life.”92 This is because, like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche believes that it is necessary to transcend this world in order to achieve redemption from death and suffering. For instance, Nietzsche writes that the tragic “knows how to redeem us from the guilty thirst for this



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existence” (BT, 125). In other words, the tragic convinces us that this life is not worth living – it calls into question our ‘thirst for this existence’ – but it also offers the possibility of redemption by pointing beyond itself. Because individuation is the (subjective) cause of the tragic, Nietzsche argues that redemption is not to be found in individual acts of affirmative willing, but instead in the abnegation and denial of individual willing, what Nietzsche calls “tragic resignation” (BT, 98). Thus, Nietzsche says that art, and especially tragedy, is “the joyous hope that the spell of individuation may be broken in augury of a restored oneness” (BT, 74).

Turn - Schopenhauer’s denial of the will is not suicidal or nihilist – but Nietzsche’s notion of tragedy is suicidal in the sense that it demands sacrificeSanderson ‘07 (Matthew Walter, PhD dissertation Southern Illinois University, “RELIGIOUS SUBLIMITY AND THE TRAGIC VIEW OF LIFE IN KANT, SCHOPENHAUER AND NIETZSCHE,” August, ProQuest)

Implicit then in Nietzsche’s rejection of traditional forms of mystical experience is his belief that mystical will-denial is essentially identical to suicide – indeed, even deicide – and therefore only intensifies the meaninglessness of life. However, as Schopenhauer argues,

suicide and mysticism are far from the same form of tragic resignation. In particular, Schopenhauer argues that, while mysticism desires a better, higher form of life, suicide seeks this life, only in another form. “The suicide wills life,” Schopenhauer says,

“and is dissatisfied merely with the conditions on which it has come to him” (WWR I, 398). For this reason, Schopenhauer condemns suicide as a deluded form of escape from this existence since, rather than seek to transcend this world, it merely seeks a different version of it. Looked at in this way, it is in fact Nietzsche’s notion of tragedy which amounts to a form of suicide, for by means of the tragic we simulate sacrificing ourselves in order to identify with a transfigured form of life, one supposedly better than we currently experience. Furthermore, Nietzsche is mistaken to identify traditional mysticism as the desire for pure self-annihilation, oblivion and nothingness. For, as Schopenhauer rightly points out, mysticism does not deny the self simply for its own sake, but instead in order to experience that which transcends the self. Also, the reality experienced by mystics is only a form of epistemological nothingness, not an absolute or ontological nothingness or void. Schopenhauer writes, for instance, that “we freely acknowledge that what remains after the complete abolition of the will is, for all who are still full of the will, assuredly nothing.

But also conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and denied itself, this very real world of ours with all its suns and galaxies, is – nothing” (WWR I, 411-412). While Nietzsche believes that the mystical realm is nihilistic, the mystic argues that, when viewed from the perspective of ultimate reality, it is the everyday world which lacks all value. This is because, according to Schopenhauer, mystical nothingness is not a groundless abyss or oblivion but rather what the mystic understands as ultimate reality or God, and what, from a

philosophical or conceptual perspective, can only be said to be nothing, the absence of a particular entity limited by space and time. Schopenhauer accepts as valid, in other words, the narrative of the mystic’s account of his intuitive experience of God, but insists that philosophy must remain

silent regarding the extra-conceptual content of this experience. Nietzsche is wrong, then, to conclude that, just because what the mystic experiences is mysterious and exceeds our conceptual grasp, it must be equivalent to death and therefore nihilistic.

Nietzsche’s affirmation of life is fundamentally cruel and encourages indifference to the plight of humanity.Sanderson ‘07 (Matthew Walter, PhD dissertation Southern Illinois University, “RELIGIOUS SUBLIMITY AND THE TRAGIC VIEW OF LIFE IN KANT, SCHOPENHAUER AND NIETZSCHE,” August, ProQuest)



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One final problem with Nietzsche’s optimism is that it leads him to recommend an inhumane form of redemption based on the idea that death and suffering are justified only from a perspective – that of the will – according to which human life appears completely insignificant. However, as Schopenhauer implicitly argues, we want to see the world as meaningful and justified according to

human standards, specifically the desire for immortality and liberation from suffering. And while seeing the individual’s suffering and death from the perspective of the will makes it meaningful – in the sense that we are able to say that ‘everything happens for a reason’ – it is not our meaning, but instead that of the will, and this is not ultimately comforting from the human perspective since the will’s reasons are so often opposed to the goals of humanity. In particular, if we identify with the Dionysian we can only look back upon finite humanity with cruel indifference, just as the whole of nature sees the human. But overcoming death is not an end so great that it justifies any means, including affirming the horrific Dionysian; instead, it is desirable only to become one with an object that, from the human perspective, is deemed eternal and peaceful, free from both death and suffering. In other words, though it is necessary, for the purposes of escaping the tragic, to identify with something beyond humanity, the object must not be opposed to humanity. The object of redemption must be extra-human, but not therefore anti-human. Thus, Schopenhauer calls any view “crude” which asserts that “the living being does not suffer any absolute annihilation through death, but continues to exist in and with the whole of nature” (WWR I, 473). For, in Schopenhauer’s estimation, the idea that we ought to identify with forces hostile to humanity is based upon a fundamental lack of sympathy for the suffering of humans. Nietzsche’s ‘aesthetic metaphysics’ is then a metaphysics of cruelty that leads to a feeling of horror rather than comfort. To summarize, Schopenhauer’s conception of religious sublimity is superior to Nietzsche’s for several reasons. First, Schopenhauer’s notion of infinity as the mysterious thing-

in-itself is more metaphysically and epistemologically defensible. Secondly, his grounding sublime comfort in the thing-in-itself is phenomenologically superior since this allows him to argue that the will-lessness of aesthetic experience symbolizes the willlessness of ultimate reality and this interpretation best explains the feeling of peaceful calm occasioned by sublimity.

Thirdly, Schopenhauer’s view is existentially preferable because it is based on the human need for redemption from death and suffering and provides an account of the sublime that satisfies both these needs.

Nietzsche’s worldview is modeled off Schopenhauer’s Sanderson ‘07 (Matthew Walter, PhD dissertation Southern Illinois University, “RELIGIOUS SUBLIMITY AND THE TRAGIC VIEW OF LIFE IN KANT, SCHOPENHAUER AND NIETZSCHE,” August, ProQuest)

Thus, Nietzsche’s metaphysics in The Birth of Tragedy are conceptualized to highlight the tragic in nature. Nietzsche shares with Schopenhauer the two-world view – according to which there are “two halves of our existence” (BT, 44), “the contrast of the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself” (BT, 129) – that distinguishes between mere appearance and ultimate reality. He writes, for instance, that philosophers – and here he mentions Schopenhauer as the prime example – “have a presentiment that the reality in which we live and have our being is also mere appearance, and that another, quite different reality lies beneath it” (BT, 34). And he even calls the two halves “eternal truths” (BT, 114). Nietzsche names the world of mere appearance ‘the Apollinian,’ which closely resembles Schopenhauer’s notion of representation. For the world seen from the perspective of the Apollinian is, Nietzsche says, “empirical reality” (BT, 45), the “intelligible everyday world” (BT, 35). Thus, Nietzsche identifies the Apollinian as the principium individuationis (BT, 36), the law of the individual (BT, 46). For, like Schopenhauerian representation, the Apollinian individuates reality by imposing order – an order that is not there in the first place – onto it. For this reason, the Apollinian world, Nietzsche



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says, is “a perpetual becoming in time, space, and causality” (BT, 45). It is then an ephemeral, transient world – a “dream reality” of “mere appearance” (BT, 34) – in which we “los[e] sight of….waking reality” (BT, 44). Nietzsche speaks, then, of “Apollinian illusion” (BT, 44), and suggests that “we might apply to Apollo the words of Schopenhauer when he speaks of the man wrapped in the veil of maya” (BT, 35). While the Apollinian is the world of semblance and mere appearance, what Nietzsche calls ‘the Dionysian’ is “true reality” (BT, 129), “our innermost being, our common ground” (BT, 35). Nietzsche says explicitly that the Dionysian is “will, taking the term in Schopenhauer’s sense” (BT, 55). Like Schopenhauer’s will, the Dionysian is beyond both individuality and plurality; it is, as Nietzsche writes, “the truly existent primal unity” (BT, 45), “the primordially One” (das Ur-eine) (BT, 132). However, though One, it is not a peaceful unity, but is instead “eternally suffering and contradictory” (BT, 25). Thus, Nietzsche also shares with Schopenhauer the view that the suffering inherent in life is grounded in “the universal will” (BT, 107). The will, for Nietzsche, is the realm of “the most savage natural instincts,” “the horrible mixture of sensuality and cruelty” (BT, 39). This is because, again following Schopenhauer, Nietzsche’s Dionysian will is blind and insatiable; to encounter it is therefore to see “the uninhibited effusion of the unconscious will” (BT, 128, emphasis mine). Hence, Nietzsche speaks of the “hidden substratum of suffering” (BT, 46), and writes that “the sole ground of the world” is “suffering, primal and eternal” (BT, 45). And it is in this sense that Nietzsche writes of “the suffering inherent in life ” (BT, 104, emphasis mine), though he does not define this as lack of satisfaction but rather means to indicate the suffering associated with nature and embodiment.

Pitying the suffering of people in the world around us is not destructive as Nietzsche claims, in today’s world we cannot afford to be unsympathetic.Conway 99 (David, Middlesex University, “Nietzsche's Revaluation of Schopenhauer as Educator,” June 5, http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/MPsy/MPsyConw.htm, dbm)

Nonetheless, Nietzsche was mistaken in supposing that it was contrary to the interests of an individual who is otherwise free from suffering to feel sympathy and pity for those who do suffer (through no fault of their own). Pity is not the baneful emotion which Nietzsche claims it to be. This verdict leaves unresolved the ultimate issue. In a world which does as a matter of fact contain the enormous amount of suffering that ours contains, is not an individual who is open through sympathetic identification to this suffering bound like Schopenhauer says to be revolted by the world to the point of revulsion with it? Nietzsche, of

course, thought the strong can and should disengage their sympathies from the suffering of the weak. I think this is a mistake. One's world is impoverished by such disengagement of sympathies. Yet how can one continue to affirm the will when one feels with all the suffering

there is? Nietzsche is correct that existence could only be tolerable if we were able to live without being constantly affected by the suffering of others. However, it was wrong to think that in order to achieve this enviable state, pity should be condemned and avoided. No, on this matter I think we are entitled to place more trust in life itself than did Nietzsche. The fact is that there are strict psychological limits on our susceptibility to feel pity. Pity is in part a function of our attention. To what we attend is a function of our will. Our sentiments very largely

determine to what we attend. Consequently, it is only where people have disengaged themselves from pursuit of personal projects, like appreciating and producing art or caring for loved ones, and so on , that there can be scope for a degree of pity of the sort that alone can

give rise to denial of will. Where denial of will becomes psychologically possible, therefore, it can hardly be thought of as unwarranted. Nietzsche

himself spoke approvingly of taking leave of life at the time before one became a burden and life lost its point. Surely, he would not have wished to frown on Sannyasis who give up all attachments at that stage in life after they have made their way through it. In conclusion, therefore, I

wish to say that their are elements of truth and error in both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche on the matter of greatest divide between them. Schopenhauer is right to see denial of will where it occurs in such figures as religious recluses as a legitimate response to the suffering of the world. Nietzsche is right to see denial of the will as not always a legitimate response to the world's suffering. Nietzsche is right that life need not contain suffering of the



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magnitude Schopenhauer claims is integral to it. Schopenhauer is right that an attitude of sympathy for all suffering creatures is a benefit and not a bane to the person who has the attitude. If my conclusion is untidy in not coming down unambiguously in favour of one philosopher or the order, I think I can take some comfort from Nietzsche's observation that "one repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil". (9)

Contrary to popular belief Nietzsche’s analysis of suffering is more life-negating than Schopenhauer in the sense that Nietzsche’s views on tragedy are the same as Schopenhauer’s aesthetic experience of denying The Will. Their arguments link back to themselves for this reasonWicks 02. (Robert, The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 23 (2002), “Schopenhauerian Moral Awareness as a Source of Nietzschean Nonmorality”. 21-38)

If we consider the situation more broadly, what some commentators appear to have had in mind as the distinguishing factor between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer is the Nietzschean idea of "life-affirmation" as opposed to the Schopenhauerian idea of "life-negation." This difference can be unduly magnified, if one reads Schopenhauer as an advocate of Christian values, understands [End Page 29] Schopenhauer's understanding of tragedy in light of his allegiance to Christianity, and then adds that Christianity, for Nietzsche, is a life-negating view. At first sight, one could imagine that an interpreter of Nietzsche would be hard-pressed to deny that Nietzsche aims to be life-affirming in his analysis of the experience of Greek tragedy. He undoubtedly aims to do this, but more central is the fact that Nietzsche is hardly suffering-affirming in his analysis, and suffering, by his own lights, is essential to life, at least insofar as it is lived by real-life individuals. The disambiguated situation in The Birth of Tragedy, then, is that Nietzsche is manifestly "life-affirming," and therefore distinct from Schopenhauer, but is at the same time suffering-denying, which draws him very close to Schopenhauer's view. It might come as a surprise to claim that Nietzsche is suffering-denying in his analysis of tragedy, but there is little doubt that this is the case. In The Birth of Tragedy he states: This view of things already provides us with all the elements of a profound and pessimistic view of the world, together with the mystery doctrine of tragedy: the fundamental knowledge of the oneness of everything existent, the conception of individuation as the primal cause of evil [italics added], and of art as the joyous hope that the spell of individuation may be broken in augury of a restored oneness. 24 Thus it is intimated that this dismemberment, the properly Dionysian suffering, is like a transformation into air, water, earth, and fire, that we are therefore to regard the state of individuation as the origin and primal cause of all suffering [italics added], as something objectionable in itself. 25 Hence follows the core argument of this essay: if one identifies with "life itself" in the experience of tragic art, and if this identification involves a transcendence of the principle of individuation, and if the principle of individuation is the "original and primal cause of all suffering," then the amount of suffering in the state of identification with life itself amounts to zero. That is, Nietzsche might be celebrating and affirming "life itself," but his conception of "life itself" is so abstracted, rarefied, and sublimated that it allows the individual to completely escape the world of suffering. This move is extremely Schopenhauerian, and it appears to be essentially a transposition of Schopenhauer's account of aesthetic experience into the field of the experience of tragic art. Just as Schopenhauer describes aesthetic experience as involving the transformation of consciousness from an individualistic, painful, conflictual, desiring condition into a universalistic, painless, peaceful, and contemplative attention to universal concepts (viz., Platonic Ideas), Nietzsche describes the experience of tragedy in roughly the same terms (substituting Schopenhauer's "will" itself for the Platonic Ideas), as involving the transcendence [End Page 30] of the everyday world of suffering. So in this respect, Nietzsche's analysis of tragedy is entirely Schopenhauerian. Saying, as some commentators do, that Nietzsche is "life affirming" as opposed to



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"life denying," or saying that he has a "this-worldly" orientation as opposed to an "other-worldly" orientation at this point in his career, buries the fact that Nietzsche himself later realized that the principle-of-individuation-independent conception of "life itself" with which he was operating in The Birth of Tragedy functions as more of an escape from daily life than as a solid affirmation of it. And this, one can easily suspect, is exactly why in his later work Nietzsche advocated a "this worldly" comfort in laughter, rather than in the experience of a mystical oneness with "life itself." Part of the reason Nietzsche was led to his surprisingly "life-negating" conclusions in The Birth of Tragedy, one can speculate, is because he was very concerned with the project of advancing a more exuberant, Greek-centered interpretation of life in opposition to a moral, Christian-centered one. So this led him to concentrate on Schopenhauer's conception of art and aesthetic awareness, since Nietzsche was disposed to oppose a "moral" conception of life with an "artistic" conception, and consequently to attend less to Schopenhauer's discussion of morality. It is in the latter discussion, though, where Schopenhauer addresses the question of human suffering more directly, and formulates an account of a universal awareness that is derived directly from reflections on life's terror. In a way, then, Nietzsche would have been better off developing his account of tragedy from Schopenhauer's account of moral awareness. The reason is this: in Schopenhauer's account of moral awareness—as discussed above—there is a greater development of the idea of experiencing life's sufferings in a condition of enlightenment. Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory, by contrast, is far more escapist and aims to be more straightforwardly suffering-eliminating. As noted above, moral awareness, for Schopenhauer, does not obviously eliminate suffering, but might even maximally increase it, insofar as a person in this condition—the condition of affirming life "with all of one's strength"—would need to take on all the sufferings of the world. Schopenhauer notes that some peace of mind is generated within moral awareness, owing to our knowledge of the truth of things, but he also adds that moving ourselves into the heart of life itself involves becoming both the tormentor and the tormented at the same time, eternally. Moreover, as seen above, this kind of awareness also takes a step beyond the distinction between good and evil. In contrast to Schopenhauer's "suffering-inclusive" account of moral awareness, then, Nietzsche's "suffering-eliminative" account of tragedy is far more effective in removing us from life's sufferings. In this respect, Nietzsche is even more Schopenhauerian than Schopenhauer.

Schopenhauer and Nietzsche’s philosophy are not mutually exclusive – Nietzsche misunderstands Schopenhauer. Compassion and pity do not create negativity because we see in sufferers a little bit of ourselvesGudrun von Tevenar, Birkbeck College, London, Autumn 2005[“Nietzsche’s Objections to Pity and Compassion,” The Gemes/Leiter Nietzsche Seminar,http://www.bbk.ac.uk/phil/staff/acad...evenar18Oct05]

When we examine these objections with the pity/compassion distinction as briefly outlined at the beginning in mind, then we find that Nietzsche’s objections are almost exclusively concerned with Mitleid understood as pity and not as compassion. Notice that Mitleid is either contaminated from the beginning with contempt and shame as in the examples of the savages and Zarathustra, or Mitleid seems preoccupied mainly with the

mental state of the agent and not with the sufferer. Understanding Mitleid merely as pity seems to me the main reason why Nietzsche’s objections, though very sophisticated and eminently plausible, somehow miss their target as far as Schopenhauer is concerned. Because Schopenhauer , when elevating Mitleid as the highest virtue, speaks throughout of Mitleid as compassion. Thus Schopenhauer claims that compassionate agents can act selflessly and solely for the weal of sufferers precisely because they see in sufferers someone like themselves. In other words, in the eyes of compassionate agents there is, according to Schopenhauer , no gap of distance and otherness between agents and sufferers and hence no associated negative feelings of alienation and shame. Indeed , Schopenhauer takes great pains to distinguish his kind



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of Mitleid, i.e. compassion, from various deviations and aberrations such as those that Nietzsche concentrates on and grants them no moral value whatsoever. We can conclude therefore that Schopenhauer could, in a way, willingly agree with most of Nietzsche’s objections and yet keep his own theory intact, since he elevates compassion while Nietzsche denigrates pity.



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A2: Transhumanism

Transhumanism incorporates humanity into the standing reserve – humans are nothing but raw material to be warped and transformed by modern technology into a more efficient form

Doede ’09 (Bob, Philosophy Dept @ Trinity Western University, March, The Society for Post-Critical and Personalist Studies, “Transhumanism, technology, and the future: posthumanity emerging or sub-humanity descending?” Academic OneFile)

Prior to the rise of modern science, tools, implements, and simple mechanisms were understood, with few exceptions, as rationally forged devices created and employed by humans care-fully to 'bring-forth' (Heidegger, 1977, p. 11) nature's own potentials to realize basic human goods. For example, the ship's sails or the windmill's blades would catch the wind, allowing it to be wholly itself as it served human ends. In the classical and premodern understanding of nature, human goods or ends were understood as a sub-set of nature's own ends. The whole cosmos was conceived to be ordered by objective ends that naturally and inextricably conduced to the realization of basic human goods. Nor did human will or desire have anything to do with either the origination or shape of these human goods or ends; they were not the result of human deliberation or choice, but fundamental givens of the supernatural forces that originally ordered nature and continued to hold it in being. The cosmos was revealed to these premoderns as bearing an ontological grain that to go along with brought human fulfillment and to go against brought alienation and ruination. The tools and simple technologies developed in the premodern world were understood to have arisen through the natural ends of the cosmos evoking within humans the means of their realization-Heidegger refers to this kind of revealing of nature as 'a bringing-forth in the sense of poiesis' (Heidegger, 1977, p. 14). However, things changed dramatically, according to Heidegger, with the rise of modern science and the technological way of being it entrenched in the West. After the late medieval voluntarism and nominalism effectively de-Formed the cosmos--flattened its ontological hierarchy into a uni-verse of matter in mechanical, end-less motion, and disenchanted it of intrinsic values and ends--modern techno-science arose to order the universe of matter in motion into serving human welfare (and, of course, human war-fare!). From this point on, if the universe will have any ends or values, they will be those imposed or projected onto it by the autonomous and alien subjectivity of human desire. Heidegger referred to the revealing through which modern technology discloses the disenchanted world-machine as Herausfordern, a cold, aggressive, commanding forth (Heidegger, 1977, p. 14). From within this cold hermeneutic of modern techno-science, all of reality shows itself as storable, abstract, inert stuff, standing on reserve as resources to be shaped and ordered by the contingent projections of human ends and values. Such ordering or framing (Gestell) of reality is the essence of modern technology, says Heidegger: as the only subjectivity within the desert landscape of a disenchanted world, humans are moved or feel summoned to so frame nature that it shows itself only as Bestand (Heidegger, 1977, p. 17) or standing-reserve, a stock of energy resources standing on reserve for human use and disposal. (8) In contrast to the sailboat's use of wind to carry the vessel over the water's surface, where nature's wind, un-worked over by humans, literally breaths through our technology to realize a human end, the internal combustion engine, a prime example of what Heidegger calls 'modern technology,' thrusts the speed boat violently through the water by virtue of gasoline which is the product of humans working over the earth's limited resource of petroleum, and a product available only because it has been stored up, distributed, and regulated through a vast bureaucracy. Modern technology frames the earth and all it contains as capital, standing ready for technological transformation and human consumption. Heidegger says 'So long as we represent technology as an instrument, we



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remain held fast in the will to master it,' (Heidegger, 1977, p. 32). Ominously and somewhat paradoxically, Heidegger seems to be suggesting that our attempts to master technology will bring with them a kind of slavery or addiction to technology's formatting of our world picture, making every thing, eventually even our selves, show up sub species manipulanda. That is, embracing the superficial instrumentalist conception of technology as neutral gadgetry, a position whose appeal is compelling in a world whose enchantments have lost their independent standing, ensnares us in a cold hermeneutic 'in the worst possible way,' by inclining ustoa 'precipitous fall ... where [we ourselves] will have to be taken as standing-reserve' (Heidegger, 1977, p. 27). In this way, Heidegger sees modern technology implying the nihilistic metaphysics of will to power. In short, if Heidegger is taken seriously, those who hold to the modern instrumentalist view of technology have themselves been framed, framed like the man with a hammer into seeing the world as a vast array of nails waiting to be pounded, framed like the men with advanced computational devices into seeing all of reality as computable information, or 'computronium'--as Kurzweil calls it (Kurzweil, 2007, p. 13). Given Heidegger's rather less simplistic reading of technology, where technology is not so much about efficient gadgets and time-saving devices, but more about a way of representing nature and human nature in particular, we begin to see that it is perhaps not at all surprising that Transhumanists, being entirely instrumentalist in their uptake of technology, proudly view human being as problematic raw material to be technologically worked over into conformity with the shadowy posthuman adumbrations they claim to glimpse just the other side of the singularity. Having fallen under the spell of an instrumentalist reading of technology, the Transhumanists are largely blind to how much of their vision of a posthuman future might just be a consequence of their own imaginations having been contoured and compromised by the hidden workings of the purportedly 'neutral' technologies they have already embraced. That is, perhaps the apparent inevitability of posthumanity might reveal more about how Transhumanists have become 'tools of their tools,' as Thoreau expressed, well over a century ago, a tendency he could already discern in the social impact of industrialization's modern technologies (Thoreau, 1854/2003, p. 33).

Transhumanism must be rejected – destroys being and ensures radical inequalityFukuyama ’04 (Francis, philosopher, September, “Transhumanism – The World’s Most Dangerous Idea,” AARPHUS Universitat, http://www.au.dk/fukuyama/boger/essay/)

Although the rapid advances in biotechnology often leave us vaguely uncomfortable, the intellectual or moral threat they represent is not always easy to identify. The human race, after all, is a pretty sorry mess, with our stubborn diseases, physical limitations, and short lives. Throw in humanity's jealousies, violence, and constant anxieties, and the transhumanist project begins to look downright reasonable. If it were technologically possible, why wouldn't we want to transcend our current species? The seeming reasonableness of the project, particularly when considered in small increments, is part of its danger. Society is unlikely to fall suddenly under the spell of the transhumanist worldview. But it is very possible that we will nibble at biotechnology's tempting offerings without realizing that they come at a frightful moral cost. The first victim of transhumanism might be equality. The U.S. Declaration of Independence says that "all men are created equal," and the most serious political fights in the history of the United States have been over who qualifies as fully human. Women and blacks did not make the cut in 1776 when Thomas Jefferson penned the declaration. Slowly


http://www.au.dk/fukuyama/boger/essay/


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and painfully, advanced societies have realized that simply being human entitles a person to political and legal equality. In effect, we have drawn a red line around the human being and said that it is sacrosanct. Underlying this idea of the equality of rights is the belief that we all possess a human essence that dwarfs manifest differences in skin color, beauty, and even intelligence. This essence, and the view that individuals therefore have inherent value, is at the heart of political liberalism. But modifying that essence is the core of the transhumanist project. If we start transforming ourselves into something superior, what rights will these enhanced creatures claim, and what rights will they possess when compared to those left behind? If some move ahead, can anyone afford not to follow? These questions are troubling enough within rich, developed societies. Add in the implications for citizens of the world's poorest countries -- for whom biotechnology's marvels likely will be out of reach -- and the threat to the idea of equality becomes even more menacing. Transhumanism's advocates think they understand what constitutes a good human being, and they are happy to leave behind the limited, mortal, natural beings they see around them in favor of something better. But do they really comprehend ultimate human goods? For all our obvious faults, we humans are miraculously complex products of a long evolutionary process -- products whose whole is much more than the sum of our parts. Our good characteristics are intimately connected to our bad ones: If we weren't violent and aggressive, we wouldn't be able to defend ourselves; if we didn't have feelings of exclusivity, we wouldn't be loyal to those close to us; if we never felt jealousy, we would also never feel love. Even our mortality plays a critical function in allowing our species as a whole to survive and adapt (and transhumanists are just about the last group I'd like to see live forever). Modifying any one of our key characteristics inevitably entails modifying a complex, interlinked package of traits, and we will never be able to anticipate the ultimate outcome. Nobody knows what technological possibilities will emerge for human self-modification. But we can already see the stirrings of Promethean desires in how we prescribe drugs to alter the behavior and personalities of our children. The environmental movement has taught us humility and respect for the integrity of nonhuman nature. We need a similar humility concerning our human nature. If we do not develop it soon, we may unwittingly invite the transhumanists to deface humanity with their genetic bulldozers and psychotropic shopping malls.

New transhumanist technologies will be dictated by market forces – only the rich will benefitDoede ’09 (Bob, Philosophy Dept @ Trinity Western University, March, The Society for Post-Critical and Personalist Studies, “Transhumanism, technology, and the future: posthumanity emerging or sub-humanity descending?” Academic OneFile)

Francis Fukuyama argues that this dramatic change of outlook on the future is the result of the promise of recent biotechnological advances. He recognizes that emerging biotechnology will in all likelihood (and in the not too distant future) enable us to actually change human nature, bringing to us heavy and arduous moral responsibilities, for we are about to enter a brave new world of possibilities that will untether us from the past and its social, political, and ethical reserves of wisdom. Fukuyama's realization of the monumental significance of technology's capacity to, as it were, morph humans out of their nature, led him to repudiate the original thesis of his ground-breaking book The End of History and the Last Man. The central thesis of The End of History was that the evolutionary logic of human history has brought human history to its telos, stabilizing the global population in liberal democratic market economies. When Fukuyama wrote The End of History in 1992, he believed that human nature was the ultimate and final constraint on the social, political and economic future of our species because he believed the constant of an unchanging human nature would keep social, political, and economic experiments on a short leash--an understanding of things amply corroborated by the fact that in the past all utopian projects of social engineering (most recently socialist Marxism)--have come to grief by running into 'the brick wall of human nature' (Fukuyama, 1999, p. 14). But when human nature itself becomes an object of technological manipulation and design, everything changes--not just the game and game plan, but the players themselves: If human beings are infinitely malleable, if culture [and most determinatively, biotechnology] can overwhelm nature in shaping basic human drives and preferences ... then clearly no particular set of political and economic institutions, and certainly no liberal democratic ones, can ever be said to be, in Kojeve's phrase 'completely



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satisfying'.... The ultimate implication of this is that biotechnology will be able to accomplish what the radical ideologies of the past, with their unbelievably crude techniques, were unable to accomplish: to bring about a new type of human being. (Fukuyama, 1999, 14-15) In the past, new political aims and social innovations

had to mesh with the given of human nature, and this put some heavy constraints on what futures could be reasonably expected. However, with biotechnologies that enable us to re-design human nature, the sky is [not even] the limit. With the biotech means to morph

ourselves as we please, we can remake human nature to mesh with any vision of the future we can imagine. What this means essentially is that we can choose what nature our species will posess in the future, and the looming question is what norms or values or ends will direct our choice. If biotech has rendered human nature entirely revisable, then it has no grain to direct or constrain our designs on it. And so whose designs will our

successor posthuman artifacts likely bear? I have little doubt that in our vastly consumerist, media-saturated capitalist economy, market forces will have their way. (4) If Fukuyama is right, then we see that the Transhumanists are vigorously pursuing changing technology's traditional 'direction of fit'. Traditionally, technology has always been used to reshape the world to better fit the limits and potentialities of our ancient and unchanging human nature. But

to the Transhumanist, buoyed up with the promise of the biotech revolution, human nature is viewed as nothing more than a technical problem. They are confident that before long, we will be able to re-design human nature into a better fit with the brave new world that our technologies--which themselves are held under the sway of our deeply consumerist economies--are birthing. Perhaps the fact that our most technologically advanced countries are the least happy, most discontent and heavily medicated countries in the world is not really a coincidence. Perhaps these are rather indicators of the need to revamp human nature to better mesh with the inhumane (or post-humane) pace and social exigencies that our technologies, and the economies that feed them, have already entrenched as normal features of our lives? As Scott Lash confesses in his Critique of Information: 'I operate as a man-machine interface--that is, as a technological form of natural life--because I must necessarily navigate through technological forms of social life. ... Because my forms of social life are so normally and chronically at-a-distance, I cannot navigate these distances, I cannot achieve sociality apart from my machine interface,' (Lash, 2002, p. 15).

Transhumanism is just the newest wonder drug – its corporations trying to convince an entire species they need the latest technology to be happy – transhumanism creates a permanent consumerist techno-culture, one “fix” at a time.Doede ’09 (Bob, Philosophy Dept @ Trinity Western University, March, The Society for Post-Critical and Personalist Studies, “Transhumanism, technology, and the future: posthumanity emerging or sub-humanity descending?” Academic OneFile)

The second trend in the West that signals its Transhumanist trajectory is its eager embrace of technologies of human enhancement. As opposed to therapy, which seeks to prevent or cure disease with the sole aim of restoring normal functioning, enhancement is the alteration of normal personal and physical characteristics, traits, and abilities beyond the statistically normal. Our therapeutic culture has prepared the ground for Transhumanism by viewing all suffering as avoidable, an unalloyed curse, and therefore pointless, while our consumeristic culture has, by construing life as one continuous chain of purchases and regarding any limitation on transformative social dynamic has been set afoot by the rise of technologies of human enhancement that is pushing us all in the direction of Transhumanist amenability. The dynamic goes something like this: first medicalize certain statistically normal human characteristics (e.g., shyness or waning erectile function) by showing that they are largely manifestations of genetic or hormonal factors that can be modified through pharmaceutical, genetic, or surgical interventions; use mass media campaigns both to pathologize these traditionally non-pathological characteristics and to normalize the potential of enhanced characteristics (e.g., indefatigable confidence or three-hour erections in 70 year olds); finally commodify these newly normalized enhanced



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human traits by offering to sell them as a means of bringing us into a better fit with the consumer choice as scandalous, already set us on a slippery slope inclined to a Transhumanist future. In late capitalist economies like ours, a demands and expectations of our deeply consumerist techno-culture. The actual, as opposed to the ideal, trajectory of this social dynamic, however, suggests that in the near future unenhanced people will be perceived as dis-abled or perhaps in-valid people, people who stubbornly remain unimproved, inefficient, and (most significantly) socially costly, ignorantly refusing to upgrade their ancient Paleocene hunter-gatherer wetware. Perhaps not all of us will be merrily prancing hand-in-hand down the technologically paved 'yellow brick road' leading to the singularity. (6) Among the most prevalent and popular human enhancement technologies are the psycho-pharmaceutical cognitive enhancers like Modafinil or Adderall, personality enhancers such as Prozac or Ritilin, physico-pharmaceutical weight loss and sport enhancers such as fenfluramine-phentermine (Fen-Phen), or anabolic steroids, and sexual enhancers like Viagra or Cialis. Although most of these drugs were initially developed to restore normal functioning to afflicted individuals, they are now available and can be used by anyone seeking an advantage or seeking to stand out from the crowd. An interesting unintended ratchet-effect (highly visible today in the case of anabolic steroids in sports) inevitably accompanies the use of enhancement drugs: as people recognize they are dis-advantaged by not using them, more and more people begin to use them, creating a new higher statistical norm, which in turn, creates a demand for the availability of a more potent enhancer--an arguably unwinnable 'arms race'. Of course, a collateral effect of this dynamic is the creating of a new 'have/have not' divide, since only by already possessing a certain degree of financial advantage will one be able to purchase these high-priced pharmaceuticals in the first place. (7) In a competitive world that promises only to get more competitive, and in particular, in the fiercely competitive domain of the economy, where it seems we're willing to do almost anything to land the highest paying jobs or to get that next promotion, who of us can persistently resist the siren call to this arms-race that subtly tilts us in the direction of the singularity?

Transhumanism destroys being—we become enframed in technology Doede ’09 (Bob, Philosophy Dept @ Trinity Western University, March, The Society for Post-Critical and Personalist Studies, “Transhumanism, technology, and the future: posthumanity emerging or sub-humanity descending?” Academic OneFile)

Steve Talbott offers an interesting perspective on the techno-slavery that Transhumanists proffer as the means to an ultimate liberation. In his wise and deeply insightful book, Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in an Age of Machines, he reminds us that technology originates from us and even from within us. Every technology is an amplification of human potentials, some primarily amplify certain bodily capabilities, and others, as in the case of information technologies, amplify certain mental capabilities, habits, and routines. Think of a hammer for a moment. It's an analogue of our fist with its properties of density and imperviousness to pain greatly amplified. Informationally driven technologies also externalize, mimic, and amplify certain low-level functionalities of our minds that are amenable to abstraction, externalization, and mechanization. A hand-held calculator, for instance, abstracts our basic skills of rule following, symbol manipulation, memorization, and externalizes these abstractions in a complex of hard- and soft-ware whose output amplifies our native calculating speed and memory capacities. Not only do technologies amplify and reflect back to us aspects of our bodies' and minds' facilities and aptitudes,

technologies are also dialectical to their very core. When we create tools and technologies, we ingeniously impose our own intentionality on the boundary conditions of matter's physical forces to deflect them to serve our ends, bending nature, as it were, around the inclinations of our nature. But interestingly, when we then turn around and use the tools and technologies we have made, these technical effigies of our own minds bring with them, by virtue of their externalized material embodiment, unforeseeable personal and unintended social consequences, i.e., certain ends or biases of their own that impose the demands of their functionality and form on our intentions, subtly bending our nature and that of our communities around their artifactual nature. Consider how the introduction of the automobile has not only transformed global geopolitical relationships, the globe's climate and landscape, and the global economy, but closer to home, changed our cities, suburbs, jobs, communities, and even our own personal senses of



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freedom, space, and time. Technologies give us more of what we consciously desire while taking from us what we are not even aware of needing, and along the way

create new desires that we sooner or later experience as fundamental needs. To put it bluntly, technologies create addictions--perhaps some are positive, others innocuous, but there is no doubt that some are deeply de-humanizing. (9) Our modern culture is ubiquitously woven through with computing technologies that are externalizations and amplifications of certain mechanical and automatic capacities of human intelligence, what Talbott calls 'devices' of the human mind (Talbott, 2007). The mental capacities that our information age and culture of informatics embodies in its technologies are the qualitatively, expressively, and creatively impoverished habits of mind that, as such, can be captured mechanically by opening and closing transistorized logical gates

via voltage differentials to then be reduced to the ones and zeros of machine code. What this means is that we are cocooned in a world that reflects, everywhere we turn, ramped up externalized artifacts of the mechanical features of our own minds; in fact, these devices and the 'closely woven web of programmed logic ' (Talbott, 2007, p. viii) they have spun into our lives, have so permeated, imbricated, and implicated themselves in our social, cultural, economic, political, and even religious environments that they are literally determining the rhythms and textures, that is, the quality, of our lives-explaining why, as Donna Haraway observes, we have become 'frighteningly inert' in our living (Haraway, 1991, P. 52). If Talbott is right, and

technologies, although embodied in external physical platforms, are nonetheless aspects of us, then technologies are never merely neutral gadgets.

They bring into technical union external material forms that vector with their own predispositions and unpredictable biases combined with those aspects of our selves that are most susceptible to mechanical simulation, which means aspects of our lower-selves. And thus, the Transhumanist project of progressively replacing our flesh with more durable and efficient technologies can be read not so much as they propose, viz., as the only road to human liberation and to entering higher and potentially

immortal orders of posthuman being, but rather as the most devious yet captivating path to sub-humanization the world has yet seen for it is nothing less than an invitation to re-make our humanity in the image of our lower-selves.


Documents

The Ego/Death K