voluntary extinction
A group in my classroom sounded a little too heated to be talking about voting theory. I came over and intervened. (All variables below, other than “I”, refer to student names.)
“I’m not working with Y,” X said.
“How come?” I asked.
“He wants us all to die.”
I asked her to unpack that a bit. Turns out that Y is in favor of voluntary human extinction. I gather that there are affectations in his clothing that mean I’m supposed to pick that up on sight, but I’m too old and too nerdy to pick up communiques by fashion.
Voluntary human extinction. This is not something I got any advice on in the diversity workshops.
I wanted very much to press him on this point, but no matter how much I try and destroy my own authority in the classroom, no one wants to be pressed by his professor on personal values. I wanted to stop class, tell everyone to go home, invite him out for coffee, and listen for a few hours. I wanted to get the real story on the extinction movement, find out what they think about what the press says, get their own name for themselves, something.
I did none of this, of course. I put X in a new group, the rest of the group were happy to keep working with Y, and we were back on topic in a minute or two.
At least, the class was. I was still thinking about Y. The popular depiction is obviously wrong or this kid wouldn’t be in a classroom (a physical classroom no less!). But, what is the motivation? What’s the philosophical underpinning? And, I beg pardon but, is he serious, or is it just that punx not dead?
We need to understand the extinction movement. No, more than that, we need to superstruct the extinction movement. Maybe despite our differences we can at least tidy this place up together. Get our affairs in order, tie up loose ends, before we commit one way or another to staying, or going.
