Humans or no humans, the world will go on
Evan Seliger’s “Pondering a world without humans” (Ideas, Jan. 8), in which he interviews Adam Kirsch, author of “The Revolt Against Humanity,” explains two diverging concepts underlying discussions about the environment and technology, a world with humans and a world without humans. He states that these two lines lead to a similar thought: “that the world might not have humans much longer and might be better off as a result.” This statement includes a value judgment, that the world could possibly be better or, by contrast, worse. Better or worse for whom?
A more correct distinction is that the two paths will be simply different, with no inherent goodness for either outcome. Thinking that one outcome could be better than some other outcome invokes a human-derived value system and inflates humanity’s role in the cosmos. This arrogance contributes to so many of the problems humanity is facing today. If we manage to find our way through them to a future where humans survive, that will be good for us. If we don’t, that will be bad for us. Either way, the world will go on quite nicely.
Ronald Hamlin
Ipswich
How about better living without technology — say, through higher consciousness?
It was with great interest that I read Evan Selinger’s interview with Adam Kirsch, in which they discussed the devastating damage to the natural world being perpetrated by the human species. I found the headline a bit misleading since human extinction, inevitable or not, is only one of several topics provocatively entertained in the piece. “Transhumanism” is discussed as another possibility, and that is where I quickly focused my attention. I found its posing of a more advanced technology as the key to redemption, however, to be anticlimactic, compared with the ancient and enduring insight concerning a higher level of human consciousness emerging here on earth. Such a higher level, which has been demonstrated by rare individuals through the ages, is of obvious necessity now — and attainable, I pray, by more and more of us.
John Hagan
Boston