After Forever – 7

Maybe we’re metaphors. We live metaphorical lives. We do metaphorical things with our metaphorical hands and go metaphorical places with our metaphorical feet. No human alive today has been to the Pyramids of Giza. Or the Taj Mahal. Or the supermarket. Or to a lover’s apartment. No human alive today has felt the palm of another’s hand. Or the flesh of an orange. Or the curvature of their own nose. We don’t know what colour our eyes might have been; through the genetic makeup of my pre-Stew ancestors, I can guess that mine would’ve likely been a dark shade of brown, but nobody knows for sure. We don’t know what roses smelled like. Or sweat. Or breath. 

We’re the children of Descartes – we think, therefore we are. Everyday, we descend the steps of a ladder of deconstruction so infinite that we couldn’t be trusted with unlimited access to it. Treaties had to be signed, facilities had to be erected, docs had to be trained, people had to be killed. We couldn’t be trusted with our faculties: unlimited potential with unlimited time. The superhumans that followed were miserable, in possession of infinite power but infinitesimal will – the great survivors, venerated by the humans of today, laid bare every one of humanity’s great weaknesses. They were greedy for meaning, searching ceaselessly for an answer for life. They argued endlessly, leaving uncountable tracts in their wake, professing clarity on what it meant to be. And when their discoveries did not leave them any better off than when they began, they despaired. Ultimately, they elected, unanimously, to be decommissioned.

If we’re to believe that we’re human, then it must also follow that the humans of today are survivors of a mass suicide. Our collective trauma is that we know – at least those of us who believe ourselves to be human know – that when the entirety of our power is unleashed, we will be far worse for it. Those of us who believe ourselves to be human must therefore also believe that we’re in hell, except for one saving grace – the sweet release of death. How can one believe we’re human and still elect to bring more humans into the world? If we’re to see ourselves as human, is there an act more selfish?

It’s a perspective with which bodied anti-natalists grappled, philosophical pessimists. Twenty-first century thinkers of that stripe made one of two arguments. Imperativists argued that bodied humans would find it virtually impossible to shed their biological imperative to procreate, reproduce, proliferate. That even despite mounting concerns about resource depletion, scarcity, and ecological disaster, most bodied humans were biologically programmed to want to procreate. This legacy of their animal wiring was visible, they argued, in their species’ explosive population growth over just a few centuries. They argued that no evidence of future lacking would ever be able to compete with the fundamental urge of most bodied humans to make more bodied humans. It’s a selfish, ultimately self-defeating drive, they argued, especially towards the end of the twenty-first century, and one that can only be combated by philosophical Apathy. The responsible can’t save the irresponsible from themselves; they can only save themselves – selfishness in exchange for selfishness. 

In the other camp were the prescriptivists. They fashioned themselves as ecological anti-natalists with a strong moral core. Their primary concern was the preservation of Earth’s biodiversity. Fundamentally, they saw bodied humans as a part of this biodiversity, but as no different from the arctic tern or the desert fox. However, they argued that bodied humans had, through rapid technological advancement, found themselves on an elevated plane of existence. Therefore, they owed it to the world, and all the life within it, to further accelerate the pace of technological advancement to prevent irreversible environmental disaster. In the time it took to resolve this, they argued, it would be key for humans to vastly reduce their ecological footprint: to buy the scientific minds who had been tasked with solving this complex problem time. To buy the arctic tern time. To buy the desert fox time. Although originally born out of the political left, by the mid-point of the twenty-first century, the movement began splintering into two radical political movements. Some – progressive prescriptivists – argued evolved versions of standard talking points of the political left, like tiered consumption taxes on the rich. Others – conservative prescriptivists – argued evolved versions of standard talking points of the right, such as the removal of social benefits from the poor who had large families. Unlike the imperativists who argued for apathy, the prescriptivists found themselves animated by a desire to change things. Very soon, each of the movements were radicalised, and within just a few years – several radical splinter cells had formed. 

One of the most radical among these were the eco-accelerationists. The eco-accelerationists argued for a supercharging of all the beliefs of the early prescriptivists: an outsized level of funding for technological development, especially where it related to environmental rescue and a rapid reduction in the ecological footprint of individual humans and corporations in pursuit of goals that were not central to environmental rescue. It was when eco-accelerationism combined with the ‘depop’ wing of conservative prescriptivism that it morphed into an effective vehicle for ecofascism. The Final Wave, as it came to be known, became the primary vehicle through which the prescriptivist movement would come to be widely understood. Prescriptivism became synonymous with advocacy for selective breeding, genocide, and central planning of industry.

In response, the initially apathetic imperativists began to absorb philosophical refugees from the prescriptivist movement. In a transformation that was very much the mirror image of the developments on the other side of the philosophical aisle, the imperativists first broadly abandoned their sense of resignation towards the march of time. It was the intersection between the first wave of progressive prescriptivist refugees and moderate imperativists that led the first few leaps of transformation within the movement. The progressive imperativists, as they were known, had early wins in capturing the public consciousness, with many of the movement’s more popular figures breaking into mainstream culture. However, despite the tremendous soft power the movement had, it failed to make the sort of early political dents the prescriptivists did. Perhaps due to their being rooted in active political participation, the prescriptivists had entered the upper echelons of political power – primarily in international conservative circles – before the the imperativists did. 

It was only when the progressive imperativist movement started to absorb those from the eco-accelerationist movement who eschewed the accelerating rightward slant of their movement that the imperativists started to develop a stranglehold on international progressive politics. The resultant scientific progressivists became the one offshoot of the twenty-first century’s anti-natalist movements to make it to the political mainstream. Its political leaders became presidents and prime ministers. Its technological leaders were instrumental in the development of brain mapping and minimisation technologies. Its thinkers wrote the works that were foundational to the treaties that eventually led up to the Amundsen-Scott Convention.

In our world, which we have come to see as post-political, we tend to forget how closely intertwined with the anti-natalists our culture is. You could argue that, along with Popper and Descartes and all the great scientists, the anti-natalists are among the most influential bodied humans. You could argue that, if it wasn’t for their anti-natalist predilections, the progenitors of the Great Age of Survival may not have been able to lay out the principles that would one day allow their descendants to choose mass suicide as the only viable path to human continuity. You might argue that the story of human continuity is as much a story of inexistence as it is a story of survival. I suppose it’s just a point of view. The question is: are we human? 

Or are we metaphors for humans? Is what we have life or is it a metaphor for life? If we’re human, and what we live is life, I can’t see how perpetuating the cycle of consciousness can be a good thing. This perspective is, perhaps, descended from the views of those early anti-natalists who saw consciousness as a bane. Those philosophical pessimists who, for reasons entirely unrelated to the environment and the continuity of the human species, argued against the creation of new life. Those who argued for our walking hand in hand into extinction, our opting out of a raw deal. In this context, I can’t see the point of coming together with anyone, let alone Anax. 

Anax and I are no longer paired. After the fight, we concluded that it would be best if we both spent some time apart – a reasonable middle ground between taking the fight to a logical conclusion and abandoning it entirely. It didn’t take too long for us to independently conclude that unpairing was the best thing we could do for each other and ourselves. We decided we would leave the specifics out of our conversations with friends, say it was inevitable, a long time coming, a big fight that ended things, good thing we hadn’t created new life. The specifics, we decided, would follow, but we both knew I would gravitate to Jay 1, Anika, and Raji, with Anax gravitating to Jay 2. Neither of us would be alone; that was important, although I’m no longer sure why. 

I’m not sure of anything anymore. I find everything I believed falling away from me. I’ve read all the great books on love, watched all the great cinema, listened to all the great music, so I know this isn’t unexpected. This is how I’m supposed to feel. I keep telling myself this is how I’m supposed to feel. For a while, nothing will make sense. Everything will seem bleak. I will – metaphorically, of course – hobble through life. Until one day, it’ll get a little easier. Things will start to make sense again. I know these cliches; I know they’re true. But I’m not sure I can ignore the questions that have come up in my journey of the last few weeks. I know, for instance, that I have very little interest in coming together with anyone. That’s to be expected, of course, as is the reluctance to pair with someone, but morally, I can’t see how it’s the right thing to do. That’s a new feeling for me, a new perspective. I know that I don’t feel like I can speak with father about this, which is also new. And I don’t think I see us as human beings anymore. 

Maybe there’s solace in that. It’s the only worldview that seems compatible with going on. To believe we’re metaphors for humans, but not humans. That our entire being is allegorical. That I can, at last, be free of seeking. It’s easier, it would appear, to be a nondescript neural network that is indistinguishable from a human than to actually be a human without a body. It no longer seems like a semantic choice. In fact, it seems clear to me that it is semantic gymnastics that got us to believe we’re human in the first place. As if it was ever fair to hold on to that title in the absence of opposable thumbs, hair, mammary glands, genitals, legs and arms. As if all that made humans human was their ability to think and speak in evolved tongues. It’s an arrogant act – redefining what it means to be human. It’s an act that we’ve perpetuated for generations, and I, for one, don’t want to perpetuate it further. 

It’s liberating. This is what it must have felt like to walk aimlessly in the afternoon rain, as blurred shadows ran for cover around you. To have nowhere to go in particular, nothing in particular to do. This is what it must have felt like to have your hands upturned, raindrops bouncing off your palms, dancing, as you spun around in circles, head facing up to the sky, eyes closed, lips fixed in a smile. This is what it must have felt like to, for a brief moment, have nothing for which to plan, nothing about which to worry. This is what it must’ve felt like to be up on one’s own feet.