MISERABILISTS AND JOHN DOE

"You need a PhD to be this stupid"

Global Warming is going to kill us all because overpopulation is making AIDS spread faster and oil is running out while we cut down all the old growth forests and the CIA creates drugs to keep poor people in bondage to the tyrant George Bush who makes terrorists in a world where nuclear winter is a certain future as we pollute our streams and air. At least, that's what we're told by the futurists and philosophers of our day. In opposition to writers and thinkers like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne who saw a better future and flying cars, modern thinkers see doom, gloom, misery, and death.

It's hard to find anyone who sees any good in the future, we're told every day by the legacy media that a recession is coming, perhaps even worldwide that might plunge into depression. We're told that in 20 years most of the Amazon Forests will be dead, that the seas will rise to engulf us, that famine and pestilence and flooding will destroy our civilization. These guys sound like particularly grumpy, depressed old folks.

At Spiked magazine, Michael Cook looked at thinkers such as Australia's Michael Flannery who never misses a chance to predict doom, but his choice as the worst "miserablist" is South African academic David Benatar, author of Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence:

Professor Benatar’s thesis is that life is so horrid that we all would be better off had we never existed. And not just us, but all sentient life. He introduces his thesis with a Jewish witticism: ‘Life is so terrible, it would have been better never to have been born. Who is so lucky? Not one in a hundred thousand!’

But Benatar is serious. ‘The central idea of this book is that coming into existence is always a serious harm.’ And, he continues, ‘Coming into existence is always bad for those who come into existence. In other words, although we may not be able to say of the never-existent that never existing is good for them, we can say of the existent that existence is bad for them.’

Professor Benatar puts all of life on a balance sheet, proclaiming "human lives contain much more bad than is ordinarily recognised," and finds the column of bad stuff far outweighing the column of good stuff? After all, how do you outweigh pain?

Tim Blair picked this up, titling the idea Hell is Other People (from Jean Paul Sartre) and his readers discussed miserabilists:

So these people are so supporting of death… exactly why are they still alive? Wouldn’t they have sacrificed themselves to Mother Gaia by now if they were serious?
-by Ash_


1321 million Chinese/ China area 9,596,960 sq km = 137.6 people per sq km
20 million Australians /Australia area 7,686,850 sq km = 2.6 people per sq km

I’d ask what Emperor Tim of Geothermia thinks the optimal population of China should be but I suspect the answer would be that China is irrelevant.
-by Col Milquetoast


I can understand how environmentalists, thinking in ultra-logical steps, come to the conclusion that there needs to be fewer human beings. But when your ‘logic’ leads you to that sort of conclusion, you need to take a good long look at your basic values and where, fundamentally, you are coming from.
-by Apple77


It must be painful to be so self-hating, and to hate everybody else that much too.
-by RebeccaH


No Rebeccah. These people congregate together, in universities, national media corporations and sundry state departments.

They are comfortable with each other, and drink champagne and dien and have sex together. And besides, its not these wise, Platonic philosopher kings who will be doing the dying anyway.
-by Wimpy Canadian


There’s only one thing you need to say to somebody who thinks we need fewer people on this planet: “After you.”
-by Jim Treacher


He’s a vegetarian! I did a quick google of ‘david benatar vegetarian’. He has written several articles about the issue, including
"The chickens come home to roost" and
"Why the Naive Argument against Moral Vegetarianism Really is Naive"

it’s the same old thing.

Humans= evil.
All other animals = must be revered.
-by daddy dave

It has long been known that comedy is hard to do, it is not easy to make people laugh, but it's pretty easy to make people miserable and sad. It is also true that most people take a depressed, grim person more serious and consider them wiser and more intelligent than someone who is happy and upbeat all the time. They must know the real deal of life and it's making them depressed.

This is a problem that has plagued the left for a long time. There was a time with the hippies that they seemed more optimistic, upbeat, and cheerful, but it was a brief dalliance with joy that soon turned dark. The world is worse than you think it is, we're told. "There are hundreds of evils you aren't aware of hiding around the corner, trust no one (except me)." Every prediction is as bleak as possible, every expression of happiness is condemned for being at best shallow and consumerist, and at worst sinister, racist, with evil motivation.

All the things you enjoy are bad, somehow: sports ruin the environment, glorify violence, are too masculine, too competitive. Children are destroying the environment, we're overpopulated, polluting too much. Driving is destroying the environment, road trips are wasteful and destructive. What do you do for a hobby or fun? It's bad, somehow. Unless you engage in an "alternate lifestyle" in which case you're fine because your diversity brings enlightenment to the world.

This is the lever that conservatives need to use to counter the left. Their ideas are naive at best and counterproductive, or even destructive in most cases. The right can show Reagan-like optimism, cheer, and see a brighter tomorrow, not a bleak and horrid one. Conservatives have a chance of showing that the world is better than the left portrays it, and can be even better. Christians have long, long given this perspective: it is bad now sometimes but there is a far, far better future awaiting you. The grim and dark predictions and calls for doom might appeal to a certain dark misery in modern people as they feel the emptiness in their lives, but an upbeat, positive message is always more welcome - and beneficial, as people try rather than surrender to depression.

The movie Meet John Doe was on last night, and I caught the speech on the radio, about the little guy. It had the kind of message we all need to hear regularly, the message conservatism can spread and build a future with:

I know a lot of you are saying "What can I do? I'm just a little punk. I don't count." Well, you're dead wrong! The little punks have always counted because in the long run the character of a country is the sum total of the character of its little punks.

But we've all got to get in there and pitch! We can't win the old ball game unless we have team work. And that's where every John Doe comes in! It's up to him to get together with his teammate!

And your teammates, my friends, is the guy next door to you. Your neighbor! He's a terribly important guy, that guy next door! You're gonna need him and he's gonna need you . . . so look him up! If he's sick, call on him! If he's hungry, feed him! If he's out of a job, find him one! To most of you, your neighbor is a stranger, a guy with a barking dog, and a high fence around him.

Now, you can't be a stranger to any guy that's on your own team. So tear down the fence that separates you, tear down the fence and you'll tear down a lot of hates and prejudices! Tear down all the fences in the country and you'll really have teamwork!

I know a lot of you are saying to yourselves: "He's asking for a miracle to happen. He's expecting people to change all of a sudden." Well, you're wrong. It's no miracle. It's no miracle because I see it happen once every year. And so do you. At Christmas time! There's something swell about the spirit of Christmas, to see what it does to people, all kinds of people.

Now, why can't that spirit, that same warm Christmas spirit last the whole year round? Gosh, if it ever did, if each and every John Doe would make that spirit last three hundred and sixty-five days out of the year, we'd develop such a strength, we'd create such a tidal wave of good will, that no human force could stand against it.

Yes, sir, my friends, the meek can only inherit the earth when the John Does start loving their neighbors. You'd better start right now. Don't wait till the game is called on account of darkness! Wake up, John Doe! You're the hope of the world!

But wait, I hear you say. This is leftist cant, this is all warm and squishy, conservatism is about big business and power!

That's just it: conservatism isn't about big business or lack of big business. It's an ideology that is about the great things of the past and the importance of not losing that. What is he calling for here, but every citizen doing their part, showing responsibility for their neighbor, carrying their load? John Doe isn't calling for the government to step in with a program to unite us all, he's not calling for a new welfare program or taxing the rich to pay for everything. He doesn't even mention the rich and the powerful, he talking to regular folks like you and me.

The entire speech is a call to responsibility, a call to ethics, a call to liberty, working together. Leftists don't want that, they want the government to step in and force everyone to be equal, yet distinct and separate. Conservatism wants everyone to be personally responsible, free, and ethical as a united people. Neighborhoods who work together don't need the government to help out. Neighbors who pitch in to give each other a hand when they're down don't need a handout from the powers that be.

And the thing that ties it all together, the uniting thread is Christmas, the season that calls for giving, that inspires love and peace and joy. The time of year when people do things for other people spontaneously and without requiring taxation or force. The time that forces us to look back at a manger and a little child in a crossroads in the Middle East.

That ain't leftist, and that ain't miserable.

Miserabilists, Tim Flannery, David Benatar, John Doe