I’ve been working my way (as always, slowly) through three different approaches and a fair number of hyperlinks found therein to the prospect of Near-Term Extinction (NTE — modifying that as Near-Term Human Extinction, or NTHE, is an unnecessary and self-absorbed embellishment). The three are these:

“Consume, Screw, Kill” by Daniel Smith in Harper’s Magazine (behind a paywall), which is a review of Elizabeth Kolbert’s book The Sixth Extinction, “The Last of Everything” by Daniel Drumright, which is a blog essay at Nature Bats Last, and “Digital Humanities in the Anthropocene” by Bethany Nowviskie, which is a transcript of a talk given at the Digital Humanities 2014 conference in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Each of these is rather long and involved. Drumright has been in the vanguard for decades, but the others may be relative latecomers (hard to know whether this is accurate) to the complex of ideas I’ll call “pre-extinction follies.” That complex is basically a response to the recognition that we humans are very likely not long for this world due to a variety of factors well beyond our control but delayed in their effect. That delay provides opportunity for quite a bit of introspection while the lights are still burning and store shelves are still stocked. From an only slightly longer perspective, such responses are arguably the province of what some call the chattering classes: those many pundits and commentators with time, education, and media resources available to ponder issues that lie largely beyond the ken of the masses. That would include me, obviously.

The matrix below provides keywords to illustrate different worldviews or ways of being (modified from its source) that overlap within each of us:

Rational

Spiritual Natural

What You Revere truth, wisdom higher being Gaia Major Beliefs power of intention, science, logic appreciation of blessings, miracles, art complexity, emergence, unfathomability of nature Means to Self-Fulfillment self-knowledge, self- management, understanding of reality selflessness, self- awareness, being of service reconnection, generosity Center of Being intellect (head) emotion (heart) senses/intuition (body) Most Respected Activities work, learning, contemplation prayer, meditation compassion, appreciation, play, communing Some Favorite Words critical thinking, integral, coherent manifest, sacred, divine more-than-human, biomimicry, biophilia Dominant Political Philosophy Progressive Humanist Green

I object to separating (not entirely arbitrarily) what is more nearly whole by pointing to this passage from E.O. Wilson’s book Consilience (which I’ve used before):

Without the stimulus and guidance of emotion, rational thought slows and disintegrates. The rational mind does not float about the irrational; it cannot free itself to engage in pure reason. There are pure theorems in mathematics but no pure thoughts that discover them. In the brain-in-the-vat fantasy of neurobiological theory and science fiction, the organ in its nutrient bath has been detached from the impediments of the body and liberated to explore the inner universe of the mind. But that is not what would ensue in reality. All the evidence from the brain sciences points in the opposite direction, to a waiting coffin-bound hell of the wakened dead, where the remembered and imagined world decays until chaos mercifully grants oblivion.

However, if there be biases and habits of mind formed from one’s experiences, chatterers probably fall into the rational column — at least until they are dumbstruck by the awesome weight of recognition of pre-extinction. Responses may tip over into (in no particular order) panic, anguish, guilt, despair, and resignation. Of the three approaches cited above, only Drumright feels to me an honest, authoritative response. Smith’s approach seems caught up in irrelevant critique about the best tone to adopt when breaking the news, whereas Nowviskie responds with a bizarre recommendation that newly developed tools in the humanities (thus, the digital humanities) be used to establish a quasi-permanent record of ourselves across evolutionary and geological time. Let me discuss each in turn.

Because my discussion would extend to burdensome length, I decided to break the blog post into four parts, of which this is the introduction. In addition, because pre-extinction is arguably the most important story (probably the wrong word) in the history of mankind, I find that I can’t look away and remain calm, composed, and objective. It must be addressed. Unrest experienced across the globe right now is part of the surprisingly fast extinction process humans have set in motion, with weather disruptions and diminishing resources creating geopolitical instability. Hyperfocus on competing factions and armaments is to my mind a glaring distraction that temporarily blocks awareness of the larger issue. But the time will come when full recognition will be unavoidable. Who knows when, exactly, what looks in hindsight as an eventuality will manifest?