now playing: it’s my party by lesley gore
in my head, there is a button. it is a big, red button, with a clear, perspex cover. it is the sort of big, red button that you press (or don’t press).
i lift the lid.
this week i have been thinking about pressing buttons. like most people, i like pressing buttons.
a button is a sort of magic wand. i want the world to be some other way, i wave my wand, and it is.
i want it to be louder, or quieter
i want it to be up, or down, or left, or right
i want it to be on, or off
i press a button
and it is
just like that.
this is a fantasy
in this fantasy, there is a castle
a dragon
a forest
in this fantasy, there are three magic mushrooms
in this fantasy, the mushrooms are buttons.
I.
the first magic mushroom button says ‘kill all humans’.
it kills all humans.
i ask myself two questions:
should i press it?
and would i press it?
yes, i think, and yes.
i define my terms:
what this is…
this is a fantasy. it should not be misinterpreted as some sort of sermon on the mount. if i wanted to win friends and influence people write a bullshit bestselling self-help book, and use the proceeds to buy myself some pals and/or politicians. pseudoliterary is about fucking minds, not changing them. if you disagree with what’s written here, which i hope you do, that’s your problem, not mine.
the should of the first question is my presumably fruitless attempt to figure out the syntax of my own moral code. the would is my attempt, given an input, to output an answer.
ʜɘllo woɿlb
(garbage in, garbage out)
what this is not…
this is not a revenge fantasy. this is not about adding up the pros and cons of our planetary impact. this is not about anthropogenic climate change, or mass extinction, or jeffrey fucking bezos. this is not about my fugly, foul-smelling, flagitious, ex-flatmate. this is not about vengeance. this is not about payback.
some of us probably deserve to die. some of us probably don’t. some of us definitely do. some of us definitely don’t.
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them?
J.R.R. Tolkien – The Fellowship of the Ring
no. well, mostly no. i think most mostly sane people would say the same.
i consider myself mostly sane
but i would still press that button.
why?
because pressing that button has nothing to do with ‘deserving death’, or ‘deserving life’.
it has to do with suffering.
by suffering, i mean profound and prolonged non-consensual physical and/or psychological pain. misery, torment, torture. agony. hell, in other words. other people.
humans suffer. we have always suffered. we will, presumably, suffer always.
there can be no justification, apart from our individual inability to stop it, for allowing this suffering to continue.
but what about joy? not enough
but what about beauty? not enough
there is nothing. not anything. not everything.
not joy
not beauty
not serenity
not satisfaction
not awe
not inspiration
not love
not hope
not art, or music, or literature
not the complete works of shakespeare
not the adventures of tintin
not jurassic park, goddamnit
not sex
not drugs
not rock ‘n’ roll
not our lives
not our deeds
not our monuments
not our past, present, or future
nothing
ok, almost nothing.
i think causing suffering can sometimes be justified.
if someone is unable to consent (and i mean properly psychologically or physiologically unable to consent), i think it can be justifiable to cause to suffer, if, and only if, the reason is to prevent or reduce their future suffering.
in practice, it’s complicated.
what about consenting on behalf of an unconscious loved-one to a life-saving operation that will leave them in permanent pain?
i think this one comes down to whether you believe you have their implied consent to save their life. if you do, do it. if you don’t, don’t make them suffer.
maybe ask yourself – who are you doing this for? for them? or for you?
i know i wouldn’t want it.
but that’s just me.
you close your eyes.
you fall asleep.
you dream.
and in your dream, you are in a forest, far, far away from the castle, and the dragon. trees fall here, and nobody hears them. ahead of you, facing away, is a man. let’s say it’s a man, but it could be a woman, or a child. this is a dream, and by the illogical logic of dreams, let’s say that you know, with complete, cast-iron certainty, that this man has no family, no friends, no acquaintances. nobody even knows that they exist. only you know. and if they cease to exist, nobody will notice. nobody except you. let’s say that that is the only thing you know.
let’s say you have a button, and on that button is the man’s name. and because this is a dream, let’s say that that button is actually a gun.
you wake up
for a while this scenario made me question my initial inclination to press the ‘kill all humans’ button. intuitively, and i think, rightly, i feel it would be wrong to kill this man. and yet, he would not suffer. if i kill him, he would suffer less. if i kill him, he would not suffer at all. i would be ‘saving’ him from any and all future suffering he might experience, or cause, in his life.
if suffering is my only consideration, priority one, all other priorities rescinded, then i ought to shoot him.
so why don’t i?
why is it not ok to kill that one, anonymous man
but ok to kill everyone?
i think it comes down to consent.
it would be wrong to kill the man in the forest, not because killing people per-se is bad, but because killing people without their consent is bad.
very bad.
killing people without their consent very much fails the ‘put yourself in someone else’s shoes’ test.
even if, like me, you sometimes think that being unexpectedly deaded would pretty much solve all your problems, and is basically, apart from obtaining a mint, first edition, base-set charizard, your winning lottery ticket, it is still possible to appreciate that not everyone wants to be shot in the head by a psychopathic pseudo-philosopher while out walking in the woods.
you wouldn’t shoot them, because you wouldn’t want them to shoot you.
you wouldn’t steal their charizard, because you wouldn’t want them to steal yours.
plus, you already stole their shoes. they’re not going anywhere.
i put myself in the shoes of everyone in the world.
everyone alive. everyone not yet alive.
some of them are a bit big. some of them are a bit small.
on the one foot – life
on the other – suffering
what about life?
what about being alive?
does that mean something?
does that mean anything?
is being alive so fundamentally important that it justifies continued suffering?
is your, or my, being alive so fundamentally important that it justifies the continued suffering of others?
or are we just unable, or unwilling, to contemplate the alternative?
life is important.
but life isn’t all there is. life isn’t everything. life isn’t even the most important thing.
and i think, deep down, we know that.
look at our ‘justice’ systems. they work on the principle that people who commit crimes (and get caught, and aren’t rich) deserve to be punished, and suffer, and that this system of punishment and suffering deters others from committing crimes (or getting caught, or not being rich). that’s how it’s done. that’s how it’s always been done. rehabilitation shmehabilitation.
so what do we do to our ‘worst’ people? i mean the the worst of the worst. predictably, naturally, though not particularly nobly, we do our worst. and what is our worst?
well, we kill them.
or do we? because even in america, the land of the free®, where everything can be bought, and life is cheap, they don’t just kill people. what they actually do is tell them they’re going to kill them, and then put them on death row, for decades, to think that over. and over, and over, and over. now and again, of course, they have to actually kill someone, to maintain the illusion. but death row isn’t about death, it’s about life.
of course, people still get killed all the time, all over the place, for all sorts of reasons. because it’s cheaper. because dead people take up less space. because as supreme leader, president, big boss etcetera, you think that that person might write something unflattering about you, or want to kill you, or want your job. but as far as ‘justice’ is concerned, killing people is not a particularly effective punishment, or deterrent. it doesn’t work. it doesn’t work because if dead people don’t suffer. they’re dead.
the worst thing we can do it make someone suffer. so we lock them away for life. the most suffering, for the most time. enlightened beings my butthole.
it would be wrong to kill the man in the forest.
it would be worse to kidnap him and make him your subterranean sex slave. or whatever.
you do you.
two wrongs:
i should press the button because all over the world, people are suffering. some people are suffering, some people are not suffering. but some is enough. one is enough*.
*if you’re not convinced that one is enough, try reading the ones who walk away from omelas by ursula k. le guin.
i would press the button because i can put myself in the shoes of someone suffering. i know how it feels. my right to life, and your right to life is not more important than someone else’s right not to suffer. fuck utilitarianism.
to summarise so far:
- ‘suffering’ is profound, prolonged, non-consensual physical and/or psychological pain.
- causing suffering is wrong. it is the most profound wrong we can commit.
- causing suffering to someone to prevent or reduce their future suffering can sometimes be justified.
- causing suffering to someone to prevent or reduce someone else’s future suffering can never be justified.
then again, according to the above, i shouldn’t.
i shouldn’t, because of the final point. if all humans suddenly died, many non-human animals would suffer.
i would, nethertheless, because i think that almost all animals would be much, much better off without us. but to allow the suffering of some, for the sake of many, is not justified by my argument, and not, i think, justifiable. it’s just my anthropocentrism, my speciesism. i can’t excuse it, but there it is.
if i really wanted to end suffering, without, in the process, causing suffering, i’d have to kill everything…
II.
the second magic mushroom button says ‘kill everything’.
it kills all biological ‘life’.
i ask myself two questions:
would the world be better off without life?
would the world be better off without suffering?
no, i think, and yes.
but how much no, and how much yes? because there can be no ‘life’ without ‘suffering’.
or should i say, the life that exists, now, suffers.
perhaps not all life.
i don’t know about bacteria. or plants. or ants. or ant colonies.
but some life, for sure.
watch any nature documentary. fuck, watch the hunting and escaping episode of bbc’s trials of life.
life, without a doubt, is gorgeous. it’s ridiculously gorgeous. it’s more damn gorgeous than it has any reasonable reason to be. it’s also ugly.
it’s all about perspective. the problem is that most of life is very far away, or very big, or very small.
is this beautiful?
is this ugly?
- a venus fly-trap catching and digesting a spider
- a slaughterhouse
- a pile of suitcases at an abandoned concentration camp
- a pile of bodies
- a motorway pileup
- a parasitoid wasp laying eggs inside a caterpillar
- the atmospheric detonation of a high-yield hydrogen bomb above a city the size of london
i am reminded of a scene in ridley scott’s (first) masterpiece, alien (1979), where ash, an android, is discussing the xenomorph with the rest of the human crew.
–You still don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.
Alien (1979)
–You admire it.
–I admire its purity. A survivor… unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.
this could be a description of life itself.
its structural perfection is matched only by hostility
yes, i admire life. its perfection. its hostility. its purity. but that doesn’t mean i’m not going to blow it the fuck out into space.
i try the shoes on again.
i put myself in the six size six (insect size) shoes of some poor zombified caterpillar being digested from the inside out by a brood of parasitic wasp babies.
i put myself in the four size four fingerless gloves of a colubus monkey being torn limb from limb and eaten alive by damn dirty chimpanzees.
i put myself in the furry flippers of a fur seal being dragged from the shallows out to sea to be tossed around for a while then drowned and devoured by an eight-tonne orca.
is there some overwhelming, fundamental ‘good’ that life is, or does, that could justify my suffering?
could that ‘good’ mean anything to me?
to you?
no fucking way.
i should press it
i would press it.
i’m sorry david attenborough.
III.
the third magic mushroom button looks different
smells different
glows
with faint blue bioluminescence
like cherenkov radiation
it is opening its eyes
which are its mouths
and it is saying something
it is saying ’ forty-two’.
it brings an immediate end to our universe.
it is a button, that, when pressed, makes it such that nothing exists.
it brings things from a state of existing, to not existing.
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Footnote to Howl – Allen Ginsberg
philosophy has a problem with holes
a big problem
and non-existence is the biggest, blackest, holiest hole in the whole of philosophy
so what is a hole?
a hole is not what is
a hole is what’s not
a hole is not a donut
but a donut’s not a donut without a hole in it
dig?
the problem with holes
and non-existence
is that we want to keep trying to define a hole in terms of things a hole is
but a hole isn’t
and we keep trying to define non-existence in terms of things that non-existence is
but non-existence isn’t
non-existence is not existence
existence is
non-existence isn’t
but that’s not it.
i think, perhaps, the problem is the word ‘is’.
how about this?
existence exists
and non-existence…
non-exists
if i press this button, i don’t exist, and the button doesn’t exist
i exist
and this button exists
so, presumably, i don’t press it
i press it
and nothing happens
a donut is not a hole:
donut
i've got to admit
looks tastier than doughnut
also, for some reason, less calorific.
is it just because it's smaller? it's less doughy.
donut is fun. it says: do.
it says: pink dildo
postscript:
as i mentioned before, i have been thinking about pressing buttons.
i became interested in this topic because i was genuinely surprised by how one-sided this discussion appeared to be online.
like, is it just me? am i missing something? i can understand that not everyone would press a ‘kill all humans’ button… but nobody? hello?
i mean, you don’t have to be a clinically depressed insomniac with chronic pain, a history of failed relationships and mental illness to consider this a question worth asking, and answering, but it does seem to help. why is that?
is it because all so-called ‘pessimistic’ philosophers hate life?
maybe. and i think that’s what most people think.
i think that’s what most people who read this post will think.
that i hate life.
and maybe i do. but i don’t think that.
i think that these philosophers understand suffering.
and i think that once you understand suffering, you understand everything.
no, that’s not it.
it’s that until you understand suffering, you don’t understand anything at all.
post postscript:
what’s worse – killing one person, or killing one million people?
a million, surely. but as humans, we seem to be fundamentally bad at this sort of maths.
In 1981, ethicist roger fisher suggested the u.s. have nuclear launch codes implanted in a volunteer that the president would have to kill before hitting the button.
My suggestion was quite simple: Put that needed code number in a little capsule, and then implant that capsule right next to the heart of a volunteer. The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the President. If ever the President wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one human being. The President says, “George, I’m sorry but tens of millions must die.” He has to look at someone and realize what death is—what an innocent death is. Blood on the White House carpet. It’s reality brought home.
When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, “My God, that’s terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the President’s judgment. He might never push the button.”
fingers on buttons…
