pessimistic blog!!!
irregular updates on my experiences living in god's decaying corpse.
irregular updates on my experiences living in god's decaying corpse.
I ask that we turn back the clock to August of 2020. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, which seemed to have stretched itself into the place between time and space, a ball and chain on the psyche even as people violated flimsy lockdown measures in much of the world; another death was reported in the news, at the time, it was just one upon many. Herman Cain, a prominent Tea Party activist, had died of the virus he had tried so hard to deny the existence of. An ironic end to a man who had during his last living week proudly went maskless at public speaking events. Few could imagine the comedic horror that would follow, and the implications it holds.
Since social media became a major part of our lives, the question of "digital legacy" has come up regularly. People struggled with the fact that Steam accounts could not be bequeathed to their loved ones once they were gone. Automated "memories" posts on Facebook and Twitter caused great deals of pain to bereaved relatives, who could for a moment believe their spouse, brother, mother, or son was still with them. Still updating their wall, with terribly generic, unfeeling posts of old photographs. The website had took it upon itself to post an anniversary wish, to remember a vacation it did not play a role in. In a way, the nostalgia associated with death had been detached from the body, and placed in the hands of the website.
Herman Cain, for a short time, had become an immortal digital spirit in the extreme. Unsure of what exactly to do, his team continued to post statements that peddled vaccine skepticism and COVID denial. All the while, the namesake of the account wheezed in an Atlanta hospital, death rattling over a short week of stilted well wishes from his Republican counterparts. Once he was dead, the posts would continue until their garish nature became unbearable. Cain, always happy to engage with blackness in a self-mocking way, probably wouldn't be too disappointed with the new name of his crack team of posters. "The Cain Gang", as it were, would continue on in a crusade of posting rudderless conservative drivel. Posts every hour, complaining about anything from trans rights to the changing of Coca-Cola portion sizes.
As people, we have long sought to remember the dead not as they were but instead as we would have liked them to be. Eccentricities and mistakes of a living person are replaced with the inoffensiveness of a still body. Furthermore, transgender people are often buried under their birthnames in clothes they would have rejected in life. To die in a selfish world is to throw youself into the control of those who see you as a commodity. For Herman Cain, this meant his politics were no longer his, they belonged to the whims of his party and social media team, who had so honestly and openly assumed the identity he had formed in life. Herman Cain (died July 30th, 2020), and Herman Cain, (born July 30th, 2020), have surprisingly different views and ideas.
One mustn't misunderstand me; Herman Cain was a massive crank during his life. He discussed openly his fears of Muslim doctors, saying "Hallelujah!" when his foreign doctor happened to be a Lebanese Christian. Even so, he remained rather proud of his Black identity, and was for a short time even willing to co-operate with Obama following the 2008 election. His transformation was not from a normative conservative thinker into a pantomime of demagoguery, but instead from a focused, human demagogue with prejudices and preferences into a machine. This new, digital Herman Cain, the one that survived the man who died of his own denialism, was the perfect right-wing machine. He could feel strongly about everything, be offended by every change in the world, because he felt nothing. He had none of the reservations of the Fox News staff that slowly withdrew support for Donald Trump, none of the fatigue of a real human. His social media staff could easily pool together the rage needed to fuel this demented device, the only question was if people would embrace it.
In hindsight the lack of engagement the account receives today and the paucity of attention it gathers should have been obvious. People are not yet ready to embrace the dead in digital form, so when complaints about the account got strong enough, it was rebranded. The posts no longer spoke from a personal tone but from a detached, organizational one. They promoted a memoir,
We discuss Herman Cain as a reminder; life, when it ends, can be continued in various ways. AI services spring up promse to give an opportunity to speak to historical figures, but they are merely mechanical slaves to the will of the living. Would Joseph Stalin apologize for the deportation of the Crimean Tatars? Would Walt Disney attempt to explain away his anti-semitism like a crying social media star? Surely, they would not, but many of us desperately want them to. If today's AI models are meant for historical figures, fictional characters, and celebrities, it won't be long until an ambitious service seeks to grant us the ability to immortalize what we love most about our deceased loved ones. Why not? Many of us do this already, in the confines of our memory. Funerals give people the opportunity to tell stories about the dead, and as a community rewrte the lives of people to be more comfortable memories to hold onto, and eventually, forget.
WAS, or wild animal suffering, is a frequently used stock argument when attempting to explain pessimistic philosophy to people. Put simply, it seeks to explain the negative value of human experience by making you sympathize with animal welfare and the damage people do to it regularly. This is a misguided practice, and one that displays a misunderstanding of how human empathy has developed. When forced to confront factory farming, or hunting for sport, people naturally recoil. We associate these things either with groups we choose to dehumanize, or with primitive and uncivilized practices that are surely on the way out. Consider that North American kids spend plenty of time discussing Upton Sinclair's
The only time the wild animal suffering argument seems to work with the common person is when the animal is beginning to pass into history. We don't like to see dying animals very much, and we especially hate to think about the many moribund species around us. Ask someone about the barely clinging on koala, and they will go on and on about the tragedy of such a cute and adorable creature dying away. The Bengal tiger is another such tragedy; an intelligent, strong hunter that has little time left in the wild, and only so long in existence in general. On the other hand, when bald eagles made life difficult for American farmers, they saw no issue destroying a national symbol to save their monetary gains. The difference between these national animals, mascots for the people who have thrown them into the fire, is that one can still bother us; the others can't, and soon enough, won't be able to even if we wanted them to. Once something is extinct, it belongs solely to our imagination, where it can fascinate us without costing us any crops; frighten us without taking an ever precious human life.
This aforementioned line of thinking is caused by how driven we are to hate animals that we see as being "in the way". Spend any time on the beach and you'll likely hear some complaints about seagulls, one of the last birds that can impose themselves in our human space. Urbanized mammals like raccoons and squirrels survive, and remain mostly accepted in our society, because they cower and run from our presence. They eat only what we see as invaluable, and because of that, are thought to know their place below us. Domesticated animals are viewed only slightly better; our ignorant, subservient companions. Even jokes about the aloofness of house cats contain a rarely spoken corollary; "My cat thinks he runs the house (but he can't survive inside it without me)". For chickens and other livestock, they find themselves in the grey zone between wild and domesticated animals. Viewed as both helpless and below us, and instead of the resource we extract from them being emotional support and companionship, it is things us modern people take most for granted; food and clothing. This is the folly of the WAS argument; we don't care that animals suffer because it benefits us that we do.
To the average advocate of our beliefs, a young man with poor social skills, this is where they throw their hands up dramatically and proclaim that there is no use. Worse even, they may be an ideologically misguided misanthrope, somebody who can't imagine the world ever getting any better, and then it's likely they wouldn't seek to discuss pessimism with others at all. Too frequently, pessimism becomes a resting spot for involuntary celibates and other people who feel as though the world owes them anything for being born. These people also appreciate the wild animal suffering argument, because it serves as a way to pass moral judgement on their lessers. (Sadly, these people rarely consider veganism or anything else that might imbue self-control and discipline to their lives.
At this stage, It is likely that you are asking for an alternative. If you can't get people to feel bad for puppies in cages or chickens in boxes, what can they feel bad about? Put honestly, they can feel bad for themselves. As any online community related to pessimism will show you, people can and will spend a lot of time feeling bad for themselves. Some people, once exposed to our philosophy, seem to really indulge in it. This is understandable, narcissism is a natural element of the human condition, and furthermore, of all living things. Everyone is scared of being hurt, of being neglected, of being exploited. They may not care so much if the exploitation happens but they are the beneficiary. If they get their sandwich on the cheap, does it matter if the chicken didn't get to flap its wings?
To make use of this natural bias, we should focus on humanity's long running quest of self-destruction. Things like war, planned famines, genocide. Ask your counterpart about the amount of suffering they choose to ignore in their day to day lives. Is there a homeless man they try their best to ignore on the walk into the store? Have they caught themselves getting giddy while seeing war footage that shows the suffering of the enemies media have taught them to dehumanize? These things are universal in our culture, and easily applicable. Even when talking to strangers, it's likely that they've learned to laugh at the suffering of strangers. The misanthrope, pessimist, and anti-natalist are born out of realizing how much hurt they cause and how much they have been hurt, not from oft-mocked slaughterhouse films presented by organizations like PETA and Extinction Rebellion.
However, I do not believe the wild animal suffering argument is useless. At a later stage, when a person new to the philosophy has agreed with its base principles, it can be a good way to reinforce understanding. Furthermore, it can be a way to discuss how to reduce the suffering of living beings on our planet, from the utopian views of solarpunk anarchists to the more realist goals posed by deep ecologists and anti-consumerist ideologies. Early on, however, pessimism advocates should look to use the inherent self-centeredness of humanity to our benefit.