American Thinker: Clemson University philosophy professor Todd May penned an op-ed in the New York Times that posed the question, “Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy”?
“Our species possesses inherent value, but we are devastating the earth and causing unimaginable animal suffering,” opines May. The same might be said for the New York Times. Does that make the case for the paper’s extinction?
To get a bead on this question, let me distinguish it from a couple of other related questions. I’m not asking whether the experience of humans coming to an end would be a bad thing. (In these pages, Samuel Scheffler has given us an important reason to think that it would be.) I am also not asking whether human beings as a species deserve to die out. That is an important question, but would involve different considerations. Those questions, and others like them, need to be addressed if we are to come to a full moral assessment of the prospect of our demise. Yet what I am asking here is simply whether it would be a tragedy if the planet no longer contained human beings. And the answer I am going to give might seem puzzling at first. I want to suggest, at least tentatively, both that it would be a tragedy and that it might just be a good thing.
Spoken like a true philosophy professor. I might gently point out that with no human beings on the planet to feel tragedy, it would be impossible for our extinction to be tragic.
But that’s sophistry – something the professor specializes in. more
If he were adventurous, he should become extinct him self.
This is a trick question, and you cannot get around its built-in invalid assumption.
It takes a human being – a conscious and ethical human being – to evaluate an event or situation and decide it is qualifies as a tragedy.
If humans were to become extinct, there would be no such being to perform that evaluation.
Human extinction cannot be either a tragedy or not a tragedy.
But it would be a Very Bad Thing anyway!
Not if the comet hit Clemson. Since there’s nothing between Greenville & Atlanta, he surely WOULDN’T be missed!
If Earth had the ISS on a selfie stick it wouldn’t show us people. It’s like zooming in on the pimple cheese that was squeezed on this article by the author during writing. We don’t see that cheese because it wasn’t shown and even if it was no one would give a shit. That’s where Earth is, it doesn’t give a shit. It has more important things to worry about like orbits, magnetosphere, sun, etc, you know big things that don’t include feeble minded professors squeezing pimple cheese on articles and then parroted to students who waste their time chasing it.
Being a native South Carolinian, I’d like to point out that this dude was born in New York and educated in Pennsylvania.
Does a Clemson professor really exist if no one can hear his whiny shit.
And this is why ‘higher learning’ is all f*ucked up.
This shit pickle couldn’t keep a real job if his life depended on it.
…liberals ALWAYS judge others by what THEY are. No one would miss Todd May, and he KNOWS it, but instead of OWNING the fact that no one would miss him SPECIFICALLY, he just goes ahead and projects it onto the REST of humanity, like the little liberal bitch that he is…
“… I’d like to point out that this dude was born in New York and educated in Pennsylvania.”
“Educated”? Is that how they spell “indoctrinated” these days, @Alan?
@Supernightshade – Good point. In cases like this, I tend to use one of their words. That dude was certificated in Pennsylvania. It means he has a certificate. Says nothing about who/what that cert. is from, what it means, what its worth. Useful word.
Professor extinction, in most cases, would be a blessing to the world.
“certificated”…I like that word and definition, @Uncle Al, thanks, I may need to use that down the road…
His statement is similar to the sound generated by one hand clapping,
Be the change you want to see in the world. -Ghandi
Perhaps the intellectually superior professor should lead by example? Anyone else getting sick of liberal ideas and everyone else’s sacrifice?
In the good old days nutty professors would be scared shitless to manifest their insanity like this. Other faculty members would take him out back, beat the shit out of him, and run him outta town.
You have to infest a college (or University) a long time to become this stupid.
First: “Tragedy” is a poetical term coined by the Greeks indicative of a type of morality play concerned with mans’ subjection to the will of the “gods.” One would expect the mis-use of the word by newspaper scribblers, televised talking-heads, and politicians attempting to bamboozle the electorate; but not by an (supposedly) educated man.
Second: What Uncle Al wrote.
Third: This is a blatant species-specific hatred thinly disguised as philosophical theorizing. Pretend, as a thought-experiment, that the species of his surmise were, say, rabbits? Or negroes? Or izlamists? Or chinamen? Or snail darters? Or (Heaven forbid!) Humpback Whales? He would be driven out of Academe quicker than you could say “poseur!”
Fourth: He is actually a good argument for “pay-as-you-go” college education – where college “professors” are paid directly by their students and, in turn, pay the college for space – the taxpayers being mercifully left out of the scam.
izlamo delenda est …
Oh this one’s too easy.
Talk about a coincidence…..I myself was just wondering if certain Clemson ‘professors’ extinction be a tragedy. I concluded that it would not.
With so many advocates, why no volunteers?
Someone needs to remind the professor that everyone alive today will be extinct within the next 150 years, including him. Then someone else can waste time pondering that pointless question.