By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist
Having children is bad for the planet, says Jill Filipovic in her column. https://jill.substack.com/p/having-kids-is-bad-for-the-planet?s=r
Having a child is the worst thing you can do for the planet, we find out. In terms of CO2 emissions, a child is seven times worse than the next ten worst things. The child is, therefore, an environmental incident that can never end.
And not only that. Having children, we learn, is bad for children. Because, if you have a child, he/she will grow up in an apocalyptic, hellish environment, full of fire and floods.
A basic google search reveals that many people have a dilemma articulated by Filipovic. “Insider”, for example, brings an article titled: “I want to have children, but they are bad for climate change. How can I have a child without feeling guilty about it?”.
Depending on your understanding of comedy and tragedy, you will decide whether to hug these people or burst into unstoppable laughter in front of them. As for me, the latter. I have no empathy for stupidity. To speak frankly, to remain in the domain of the presented environmental arguments, human stupidity is not good for the planet. And for children, either.
Despite what Tolstoy claimed, all families and all the people in them are unhappy in the same way. Let me introduce you to the bigger picture: all people are unhappy in the same way, whether they organize their misfortune into a family, a sisterhood, a company or a Masonic lodge. There is no unique misery: if you think the pain you are feeling makes you exceptional, different from all who were hurt, I kindly remind you that suffering is not an excuse for stupidity. Unhappiness is, just like life, just like stupidity, a mass phenomenon.
The planet will survive, no worries. But a civilization thinking about whether to have children, because children are bad for flowers and leaves, won’t. This is also not a cause for concern. On the contrary.
There is a lot that exists without any reason or need. But nothing has ever failed for no good reason.
Another thing is interesting here.
If children are bad for the planet, I guess adults are bad for the planet too. If fewer children are good for the planet, then fewer adults are good for the planet. Why would environmentally conscientious adults, in their efforts for the good of the planet, stop at eliminating children from life?
Wouldn’t a truly eco-friendly act be to eliminate themselves from life as polluters? Isn’t it logical for “Insider” to ask this: “How can I continue to live without feeling guilty about it”. I know: it sounds like suicide, but let’s ask ourselves: who am I to emit CO2 all my life and torment the planet?
It’s a bit wrong, don’t you think? Both me and my child are bad for the planet. But let me be on the planet, and let the kids go fuck themselves.
The thing is, therefore, grotesque. What should we do – commit suicide after we have eliminated the children, as they are bad for flowers and leaves, so that a thousand flowers could bloom?
At the same time, it is clear that suicide should be carried out by emitting as little CO2 as possible: seppuku (hara-kiri) seems to be a good option. And after that the room should be cleaned only with organic, absolutely degradable detergents. What’s the use if you killed yourself and polluted the river?
That’s it… Death is good for nature. Finally: the grass is nowhere as lush and green as in cemeteries.
As it turns out: what is sold as progressive thinking is actually a complete breakdown of thinking.
But… The idea that the world is about to collapse and therefore should stop living is by no means new.
You can find it, say, in the New Testament. In the Epistles of St. Paul. He went and reviled the communities of those who, under the influence of the Revelation of John and convinced that the end of the world would come in no time, gave up life.
However… As I wrote in “Homo Sucker: Poetics of the Apocalypse”, a book that you will not find in Montenegrin bookstores, because those bookstores do not sell my books, which is the price of my political activity which I gladly pay and add a tip,
“The history of human attempts to determine the exact date of the Apocalypse is an extremely comical reading. Like some ideal crossover by Thomas Pynchon and Ambrose Bierce, this story is made up of stories about people who saw signs in the world around them, and in signs the end of the world. The plot is made in Pynchon’s way: full of mystique of numbers, conspiracies and bizarre discoveries. But the end of each of these stories was sarcastic in Bierce’s way: the only end that will await those who predict the end of the world will be – the end of their lives”.
The Internet is full of data on unfulfilled predictions of the end of the world.
Especially joyous, let’s call them that, are London stories about the end. In them, the famous British sense of humor comes to full expression. In June 1523, several London astrologers calculated: the end of the world comes on 1 February the next year. It will start with the flood in London. The water will then cover the whole world. Tens of thousands of people left their homes, running away from the announced water. When the day of prophecy arrived, not a drop of rain fell in London.
The Prophet William Bell announced that on 5 April 1761, an earthquake would occur that would destroy the world. Bell had previously predicted an earthquake on 8 February. It didn’t happen. No worries, it will be 8 March, he said. There was none. When they left their homes on 5 April and fled to the hills, and when there was no earthquake again, angry citizens threw Bella into Bethlem, a London psychiatric hospital.
Or, for example, this… In his Book of Prophecies, Cristoforo Colombo stated that the world was created in 5343 BC and would last for 7000 years. The end, therefore, was to come in 1658. He missed, but what could have been expected from a man who searched India and found America?
The ecological apocalypse announced by Filipovic and her like-minded people is, clearly, just a secularized version of the apocalypse that Christians have been waiting for in vain for two thousand and a half years. In fact, it should be said: a seemingly secularized version.
Because green capitalism, like capitalism itself, is a religion.
Here, clearly, I vary Walter Benjamin’s thesis: capitalism is a form of religious cult.
According to Benjamin, capitalism is a pure religious cult, one of the most extreme ones in human history. The permanent duration of the cult is framed by unrestrained celebration without dreams and mercy. Capitalism is the only cult that offers infinitely intensifying feelings of guilt instead of repentance and forgiveness. And here it is: the people of capitalism feel guilty even because they want to have children.
Of course: it is said that children should be given up, but not the only thing that is obvious: that capitalism should be given up, because in fact, with its endless production and consumption, it is the greatest danger to the planet.
No, no. We can do without children, but to stop spending frantically – well, we can’t do that.
And that is the great ethical dilemma of today?
Green capitalism is, I say, a cult.
And a cult is always looking for a victim.
And there it is… The world is full of people who are ready to offer their unborn children to the green deity.
