The other day I saw this clip on CNN of this climate researcher guy talking about how we are literally in the middle of, “the sixth great extinction.” I saw this clip at the end of July sometime when it first aired, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. The thing about the clip that was so striking to me is that it feels new; a guy on a mainstream news channel detailing the predicament we are all in is not something that is regularly done. Of course climate change has always been talked about in the past, and people like Greta Thunberg have caused a stir in recent years discussing it. But the way it’s described in the video feels very unemotional and in clear terms: we are quite literally in the middle of an extinction event.
Since seeing this video, it has kind of coloured my perception of the world a bit more. Although I am already pretty black pilled about the state of the world and so on, it feels weird to know that I’m not a crazy person, and what I’m feeling is actually real. It bleeds into so much of the constant everyday madness I’m seeing all around me: people are more retarded than they’ve ever been, there’s a virus running rampant people can’t all agree on, we’re still burning energy constantly, the population is the highest it’s ever been, the weather is getting unbearably hotter, and so on. The idea that we’re in the process of an extinction event is a great way to put it, and it really explains so much: things are slowly degrading over time, and everything is generally awful for awhile. It’s an era of awfulness, that is the whole mood of the moment right now: it’s a bad time, we all know this, and no one is going to do anything to stop it because it’s sort of bigger than all of us at this point. (It’s no different than how Tolstoy talks about the phenomenon of war in War and Peace: whatever happens is what was going to happen anyway). It’s like we’re the toys in Toy Story 3 holding hands, about to die, and finally accepting it.
The interesting thing about an extinction is that it does not occur in the short span of a week or a month, it’s actually a long, drawn out process that can take thousands of years. I don’t think humanity has as long as thousands of years to be honest with you, but we do still have some time before we’re all gone. That’s the fascinating thing about extinction and where we’re at right now: people tend to think that the end of the world means a big fiery asteroid hitting the planet and causing a ruckus all over, or an alien spaceship crash landing one night and confronting a whole bunch of people. In media depictions of the end of the world it’s always some kind of exciting singular event that affects everyone, but in real life this doesn’t seem to be the case. The idea of extinction would not make an exciting movie because it’s slower, and it pops up in the everyday, mundane aspects of life.
I know some of this might seem outlandish to people who disagree, but you can see it in a million different ways. The way men and women are now is a great example: women are more promiscuous than they’ve ever been, and lots of men are more introverted and feminine than ever before. Women are acting like men, and men are being gay (this is stuff I’ve joked about in Searing Originality I think). People are getting married less, and getting into relationships less. There are articles about how people are lonelier than they’ve ever been and there’s no sense of community anymore. People are still jerking off to online porn instead of talking to each other. Speaking of porn, Onlyfans is probably a more lucrative job in 2023 than any other job in the past.
This all might sound silly, but to me these types of changes in humans are all clear signs we’re in a state of breaking down. I don’t think this is a case of “old man yells at cloud,” I really do think all these things are indicators we’re in a dark time. It’s not just a matter of times changing, which is usually understandable, it’s more that times are getting crazier and illogical. (I talked about transgender stuff in Something Somewhat New Under The Sun and it is directly related to stuff I’m saying here: there are real reasons a person would want to change their gender, but then there’s the other reason, society getting more insane in general).
Or how about the housing crisis? I’ve read articles about how bad it is in Canada right now, and to give you an idea of what it’s like: there are people out there with impressive salaries and they say they can’t afford to buy property. These are people who have more money than I ever will in my life probably, they have jobs that are the highest paying in the world, and they can’t afford property. Or what about the fact that more young people are having to live with their parents than ever before? People are being robbed of their independence in this era, and instead of growth and getting to be happy, most people have to force themselves to deal with their shitty lives and maintaining it. I know it sounds farfetched, but these are all examples of extinction and the fact that we’re on our way out. There’s no progress happening, it’s a period of decline and disrepair.
Another one would be behavioural changes on the road, and how many terrible drivers there are in the world these days. Covid or lockdowns or however you personally want to describe 2020-2022 definitely did something to people’s brains, and it seems like terrible driving is at an all-time high. This is another one of those things I don’t really feel I’m imagining, I’ve talked to people all over the world and it’s just a shared experience: people are more aggressive, they are unfocused, they’re speeding. And of course, the texting while driving is a constant problem; I’d argue it’s worse than drinking and driving. It’s more insidious, you can’t really test for it like a blood alcohol test, it distracts people in a much more sinister way where they’re not even looking at the road, and even when they are, they’re not focused on driving, they are utterly consumed by their phone and returning to it. It seems that there are more careless accidents happening regularly now, which again is another sign to me that we’re falling apart as a species who used to take ourselves seriously. I don’t look around at people and feel a sense of pride at my species or affection anymore, most of the time I feel disgusted by what I see. That is not to say there are zero moments of beauty or kindness or whatever in my life, but I do think the average person is a complete idiot, a by-product of their time, and mostly unable to think clearly or originally in a way that matters anymore.
And I guess that leads me to my final point. I could go on longer, but I will end with one last example of what I mean here: it seems like intelligence overall has sort of declined by a little recently. It’s not so noticeable that society isn’t able to function anymore, but that honestly isn’t saying very much that the bar is so low either. Most people were already not that bright to begin with, but when you add everything going on to that, like covid/brainfog/societal stressors/the economy/financial concerns/etc people have gotten much worse. The general madness in the world has increased as the heat and viruses ramp up, and this is just what extinction means. It doesn’t mean that we all explode and die on the same day, extinction feels like you’re in an elevator slowly going down. Everything doesn’t disappear at once, it just kinda slowly goes. A sense of community or real friends….gone one day. A nation of well-informed well-read citizens….that doesn’t exist anymore, no one even reads books. Groundbreaking, intelligent, great art….that’s gone now, there’s nothing good in the culture anymore. (Oppenheimer doesn’t count, I’m talking about original, explosive art like Apocalypse Now or something that no one has ever seen before. Oppenheimer was a stylized Wikipedia article and it fucking sucked). Then by the time you get to the bottom of the elevator more important things are missing, like water, electricity, and air conditioning. Things are going one by one, and we can see this clearly by observing how human decency and behaviour have shifted slightly recently.