“That’s beside the point,” she said impatiently.
“But I thought the point was to prevent unnecessary suffering? Well, the best thing you can do in that case is to not bring any more human beings into existence. Not only do you then prevent the suffering that the new human causes, but you also prevent their suffering.”
“What are you talking about? This isn’t about that. We’re here to stop the abuse and murder of innocent animals and to prevent global warming.”
“Well, then it is about that. During the last fifty years, when the human population has doubled, half of the earth’s animals have died off. And not because we ate them, but simply because there are too many fucking people on this planet and the idiots keep creating even more.”
“Listen,” she said, waving her finger in front of my nose. “No privileged cis white male is going to tell me what I can or cannot do with my body! If I want to have a child, then it is my choice. And if that child is gonna be a vegan, that’s also my choice. And anyway, it’s better to have one child than to be responsible for murdering thousands of animals!”
I was getting tired of talking to her as she clearly wasn’t listening to me, but I couldn’t let her have the last word, especially one as lousy as that.
“You know,” I started. “Back in the day, there was a group called the Church of Euthanasia. Have you heard about them?”
She crossed her arms. “Can’t say that I have.”
“Well, they were also concerned about the earth and didn’t care about human beings much. However, their slogan was, ‘Save the Planet, Kill Yourself’. So if you green cunts were truly serious about any of this shit and it wasn’t just some social club for you that made you feel superior to others, this is what you’d advocate—don’t have children. And better yet, kill yourselves outright. Commit mass suicide. That’s the greenest thing there is. In fact, you can even have the animals eat your corpses.”
With each word that I had said, she seemed to have gotten more and more triggered. “I can’t even!” she said through gritted teeth. “Why would you say something like that? ARGH!” She stormed off. Probably to tell her vegan girlfriends what a horribly ignorant meat-eater she had just met.
I lit a cigarette and observed the crowd before me. Her reaction had not been unusual. Anti-natalism—the idea that humans should not breed—was not a popular view. Not even amongst most green freaks. This despite the fact that all the troubles that existed in the world existed solely because of human beings.
Despite the obviousness of this idea, admitting this to the average person was like confessing to a murder. Even in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where all that existed was misery and squalor, humans, in their never-ending capacity for delirium, would without a doubt still continue bringing new people into this world instead of realizing that doing so was both cruel and insane. That was how strongly the delusion that life was good was embedded into us. It had to be since otherwise there wouldn’t be any humans around. Life was like a pyramid scheme that had to be constantly shoved down the throats of new victims in order to keep the scam going.
As I was walking away from the protest, I was reminded of how I had also once cared deeply about the earth. About global warming. About CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. And so on. I had even been a bit of a prophet of doom, preaching that if we didn’t change our ways, we would end up destroying ourselves.
But even if we managed to save the environment, then what? Our lives would still be insignificant and full of suffering and boredom. So what was the point? Wouldn’t it be better to save ourselves from existence instead? By doing so, we would also be saving the environment. At least until some other natural catastrophe occurred—with or without humans—which would eventually wipe out all life on earth anyway.
Besides, according to statistics, thinking we could “save” the environment at this point was like believing in a fairy tale. It wasn’t going to happen. And it didn’t matter. The earth was going to be better off without us. Nothing in nature needed us. Humans, as John Gray put it, were like any other plague animal—we couldn’t destroy the earth, but we could easily wreck the environment that sustained us. And that was precisely what was going to happen. We were going to die out just like countless other species before us. More than 99% of all species that had ever lived on earth had gone extinct. That was the natural order. It was going to happen one way or another. So why should we postpone the inevitable by creating even more life? Even more misery? Even more death?
I had once read that Carl Sagan thought that the reason why we hadn’t found any alien life in the universe was because all so-called advanced civilizations, such as ours, had a tendency to wipe themselves out.
I believe he was right.
23
Speaking with the vegan had given me a craving for some steak. Good steak. Not the shit I had eaten with Vicky. Although my bank account was quickly being drained by my current bender, I didn’t really care. I had never cared for money. If I had it, good. If I didn’t, so be it.
As I was walking in Old Town, I saw a restaurant called Purgatory, which seemed like the kind of place that might have good steak. The restaurant was underground in a very old building. Inside was an arched ceiling and heavy wrought iron chairs and tables.
After I sat down at a table, a fat waitress brought me the menu. I flicked through it and chose the most expensive item: a steak with oven-baked vegetables and port sauce. When the waitress came back to take my order, I asked her how much fat the steak had. She said none. I ordered it. Medium-rare. I also ordered a smoked lager with an alcohol content of 6.66 percent.
She left for a moment and came back with my beer. I had a taste. It was disgusting. One of the worst beers I had ever drank. It tasted like it was rotten. Why the hell did people like these disgusting craft beers so much, I wondered.
As I was waiting for my steak to arrive, I examined the painting that was on the wall next to my table. It was an abstract that consisted entirely of textured black smudges. Was there a meaning to the black smudges? Perhaps. Or maybe it was like a Rorschach test and the meaning came from your own brain. If so, all I could see in it were the suffering slaves of hell, wriggling like worms in their miserable struggle.
Eventually the waitress brought me my steak. I took a bite. The first thing I felt in my mouth was fat. The steak was full of it. To add insult to injury, the vegetables on the side were not cooked through properly. This was the most expensive item on the menu. And it fucking sucked. Even the supposedly good things in this world sucked. Why was it so hard to find a decent steak? Why was there so much fat on everything? Especially the people.
After I was finished with the meal and had downed the disgusting beer, the waitress came to take away my plate. She asked me how I had liked the food. I pointed at all the fat left on the plate and said that there had been way too much fat in the steak. She said she’d let the kitchen know, which was probably a lie and didn’t really help me in any way. Besides, she had been the one who had told me that the steak had no fat. That was often the way it was in this world. Everything was sold as ideal, even though in truth it was only half of that at best. Or less. Yet most people never complained since they were so used to lying to themselves and to others about everything being fine all the time. They lied to others because they didn’t want to rock the boat and they lied to themselves because they didn’t want to admit that they were being lied to everywhere they went.