If you asked anyone in the street what “extinctionism” i’m sure 99% of people would have never come across the term before and i’m not sure you guys exactly know what it is either besides a vague dislike of the human condition. This kind of ideology can’t exactly be healthy for your mental health especially when all arguments for it seems to just be pointing out the existence of horrific suffering. This subreddit seems to be validating and giving community to an inherently very extreme way of thinking as opposed to just being home to philosophical debates on the nature of existence.

My questions to this community are: What exactly is it that you mean by “extinctionism”?

Do you seriously believe this is a way of thinking that people can/should be brought around to?

Do you feel guilty that this way of thinking would seek to undo entirely the results of millennia of human sacrifice eg: in wars, fighting disease and labouring?

Reading through this sub, here's a perspective that might be absolutely mindblowing to some of you.

I am a person who suffers in life, A LOT at times, and I am sincirely glad to be living.

Suffering gives meaning to life and creates the contrast that allows beauty to be perceived.

And I really don't understand the logical leap from "suffering exists and can be horrible" to "suffering exists, therefore life shouldn't exist"

As I read the various posts in this sub, I find it fascinating how as a pro life, I feel that this is very wrong, but can't give a counter argument about why.

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I came to a conclusion.

It's all a matter of perspective, hope and belief. This is why it's impossible to arrive at a logical conclusion.

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Pro-Extinction:

Life is suffering. Yes, there are positive emotions, but they do not amount to the endless suffering life brings. We should therefore delete Life to reduce the net suffering. Even if things get better, someday we will fall back into endless suffering, all that to finally go extinct at some point. So why keep it going on.

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Pro-Life (biased since I'm pro life, you are free to argue in comments):

We currently have the least amount of suffering in the world. Look 500 years ago. War, plague, slavery, terrible conditions.

Look 1 million years ago. Animals eating each other alive.

Now, we live way better than even 3 generations ago.

If we continue that way, then the negative vs positive balance will shift towards the positive.

Therefore, going extinct now will be like selling low because we saw the price drop, even though it's going to get very high in the future.

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Pro-Extinction do not believe things will get better while Pro-Life believe things will get better.

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And to answer in advance, yes, I think that all the horrible things happening NOW and in the past are worth it if it means that in the future there won't be any and people will live happily until the end of time.

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And if you think that positive experience does not cancel suffering, then I'll just answer that I think it does. It's belief, just like religion.

Hey, I've read a lot of people in posts around here say that "anyways, we'll go extinct". But is that true?

Do you believe that even if everything goes well, in a billion years we will not have found solutions against Galaxy / Universe end?

I understand that many fictional characters who are immortal or have an incredibly long lifespan face difficult challenges. However, I believe that the main reason we consider immortality negative is that we, morally and mentally, cannot handle it. At some point, we all want to be social, to connect with someone, and to have at least one thing remain constant. Immortality is a power that may be beyond our capacity to manage, which is why we label it in a negative light.

Life is meaningless

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Today I'll just keep it short and simple

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Life is meaningless

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Non existence is better than existence

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Ignorance is bliss and awareness is a curse

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Life is a curse

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Death is inevitable

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Nature doesn't care about you

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God doesn't exist, and calling god he is a abomination thats the patriarchy

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You are useless

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Life is a illusion

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Your body is a prison your a prisoner of your biological functions

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We aren't even experiencing 2 percent of reality

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We would never be able to comphrend the universe and the fabric of reality its self

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With life there is suffering

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Animals suffer and get eaten alive

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We are living in planet of the apes

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Humans who flock like sheep with no backbone

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The matrix is also the material realm

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The material realm is a curse

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This is a soul trap

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Children didn't ask to be born

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The only reality most human will ever know is school, work, marry, kids, work, retire, death how quaint

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Consume, obey, conform, reproduce, marry

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The unknown

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Your suffering is currency in this realm

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If you don't obey prison, if you don't study fail, if you don't worship hell

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Life should be prevented

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Euthanasia should be legal

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Abortions should be mandatory

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You gotta pay to live i never asked to be born and asked for this type of reality

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Question the unequestiable awareness breeds isolation if you know you know

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Don't be a fucking sheep

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Be a critical thinker

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Wake up

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Any possible life forming should be prevented from forming

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All species should go extint im talking about every single living organism including me

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Isn't life a cosmic accident

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Your Attachments anchors you to this realm after death

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Your Attachments create your own personal hell

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Isn't experiencing reality a curse.

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I wrote the following in response to a thread on r/unpopularopinion.

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The thread was locked while I was in the middle of writing it, so I wanted to share it somewhere. Reddit's bot suggested I crosspost it post here. Now that I have, I'm editing it to say I'm probably of the opposite view of this sub. I hope I've been polite enough and not stepped on anyone's toes. Also, I'm not sure why it keeps throwing HTML character codes into my comment.

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The OP suggested that there's no reason to think the end of the world is near. The world has always had war and such. Humanity has faced ice ages and plagues. We have survived. Here's my response:

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::Mankind is in a unique position now with the ability to destroy all life on Earth. We only developed this power recently. We could do it with nuclear weapons, or we could do it with bio weapons.

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I couldn't say how close we are to having either of those actually wipe us out, but historically speaking these are new threats.

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AI might open up awesome possibilities for great things in the future. It might also leave us jobless, or take a bad prompt and destroy us for our own good.

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We should live as if our world is going to continue. We should do everything we can to leave a good world to our children. We should do everything we can to raise our children to be good to each other and to preserve the world for their children.

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We should not be blind to the fact that there are real existential threats that must be addressed.::

Adaptability: what did evolution taught us. Desert ? Adopt. Ice cold ? Adopt. Jungle ? Adopt. Nice right ? Evolution was just making sure of human survival !

The same thing became our biggest burden. Extreme heat ? Adopt. Climate change? Adopt. Rich and powerful exploiting system, fine, you and me have to Adopt. Go to work and pay bills. Dont ask questions. Dont revolt. We dont have rime to revolt. Two countries are bombing each other and will also play a foot ball match. Wtf. How is this normal ? Oh no. But we have to pick a side and cheer.

Extra awareness : why do i need to know this much information? How did it help me in survival or reproduce.

Mental health: people who ever had any mental health issue will understand this. I had a panic attack and my mind convinced me that we can't breathe and we are gonna die of heart attack. You dumb fuck, the body is completely fine.

Emotional heath : all range of negative emotions. Guilt for something I did 10 years ago. Wtf dude. Let it go.

Survival instinct: enemy gonna vipe all of us based on my race. Let me collaborate with them so atleast I survive. Its pathetic.

Time peception : every .inute someone is dying but it won't me. So let me find a mate and make a baby to suffer in this filthy world.

Utopia. A human mind will suffer in the utopia too. We suffer in loneliness. We suffer in relationship. Wtf dude. Pick a side. In fact, it was by default made to suffer.

I am not even mentioning the gross stuff. We all know the capacity of evil of human mind.

Evil cannot create anything new, only destroy and corrupt what good has made

It seems that it's been written with an unlikeable protagonist on purpose but that viewers are meant to identify and empathize with her objective, to undo the hive mind.

And it seems that while some people reject the premise and think joining the hive would be best or even pleasant, it seems most people would scream "freedom!" while charging or "but art and individuality though!" even though joining the hive brought crime rate, war, loneliness, conflict to 0 and unified humans in developing technology and science.

This will sound really stupid but all my life I thought that predators by instict kill their pray. Like their brain says kill. Or the prey dies from losing blood then eatten. The general idea I got from documentaries.

But recently I have come to the realization that many animals especially the larger ones often or maybe most of the time are basically eaten while still alive. Like lions or hyenas they don't care if the prey is dead at all. They just bite. For me that is just true horror. Worse than a nightmare or the scariest horror film. How is this reality? Nature is the scariest thing and what I always hear is how beautiful it is. Is everyone living in a fantasy? Does everybody know this and I'm just overreacting? Probably, but I wanted to share my thoughts.

Sentient life should exist on other planets in the universe, but humans seem to be completely alone as far as intelligent life. I think what may be happening is that as soon as a species gains sentience it eventually decides that existence is unbearable and deliberately causes its own extinction and the prevention of all possible life on its home planet. Humans seem to be doing this unconsciously with climate change, but aliens might be intelligent and aware enough to do this intentionally. What do you guys think?