NEWS: The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement Has Some Good Points

GEEK: The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement Has Some Good Points

I’m pretty vocal about the fact that I don’t want to procreate. I’ve told everyone I know and almost everyone that I don’t know; I don’t want kids. Surprisingly, about half the people I know are turned off by my non-existent biological clock and more surprisingly, the other half have agreed with me a little too vehemently and told me to check out the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

I didn’t ever bother to check the website until I decided that maybe I’d write about it. The name turned me off and I thought it sounded stupid and almost violent. After all their mission statement is:

My decision to not have kids is mostly based on a really simple fact -- I don’t feel like it (and never have) and even if I did feel like it, can’t afford it. I mean, not even close, not even with cutting out Starbucks like so many self-made millionaires suggest doing.

But this website is giving me some good ideas on how to comeback against my future-mother-in-law who is already disappointed in me:

I’m an environmentalist (as much as a I can be) so it’s rather convenient that -- since I’m dead inside and don’t want to be a mother -- that actually my not making a little baby carbon footprint is sort of good for preserving the Earth. I’m told by many that my biological urge will one day override my power of thinking and reason and I’ll scramble to make a baby and silence that urge.

I’ve always thought that ridiculous. What does the urge feel like? Is it like being horny? That’s the closest I’ve gotten and some of those wacky extinction lovers put it this way:

At my worst (usually when drunk) I can get self-righteous, getting mad at breeders who procreate even though their kids might not have a shot in hell at breathing clean air and I’m the selfish one according to them?

But the VHEMT website makes a good point and calms my self-righteous urges:

My apologies to all the new parents I’ve alienated.

So contrary to what I believed before, this website or movement makes a lot of sense. Some of my friends are thinking about having their second kid so that their current child doesn’t grow up alone. I mean, do we really have that luxury anymore? We’re at our capacity. And I know the automobile and meat industries are highly responsible for global warming but it seems like it’s very taboo to talk about breeding and saving the Earth in the same breath.

Although where the site started to lose me was their hope for an Earth that eventually has no human beings whatsoever. I can’t wrap my mind around giving a shit about that. I am not really passionate about wiping out the human race entirely so that the Earth can heal but more so just letting the people who are being born have something of a chance in Hell, like I did and do, at least for now.

You had me at "I don't want to procreate."

I've never wanted kids for purely selfish reasons.
But I do believe that Humans have as much right to be here as any other animal or plant or whatever. We just need to be smarter about how we treat the world.

I don't want kids - mainly because I can't stand them but also I NEVER want to do that to my body, some women bounce back but I know I'd end up with floppy spaniel ear boobs and a chuff like a wizard's sleeve so childbirth can fuck off. If I hit my mid-thirties and get broody I'll probably adopt, which, considering how many orphans and unwanted children there are in the world is the right thing to do. Why make a new one when there are so many already needing love?

But I haven't made that choice because I believe the human race has to die out, that's just a bit....creepy, to be honest. This planet is overpopulated and humans are outgrowing their resources, and adding to that overpopulation is a bad idea. But I'm quite happy being alive and having a species to be part of!

People get angry when I assert that I have never heard an unselfish reason for having kids. They can't come up with one, though.

This is a bad idea because stupid people breed like rats. Soon they'll outnumber us and then what do you think will happen to the planet? If we're going to have humans, let's at least try to keep the more highly evolved ones in the running.

i want kids mostly cus at some point with all the time overseas my luck is gonna run out and i am gonna get hurt. you can only get blown up so many times before you don't get hurt. so i'd would like to continue on, in my opinion, my good name. but i do think that idiots should not be allowed to breed.

I'm not sure what getting hurt has to do with whether you breed or not, and the "idiots" comment I will not even dignify with the tempting, almost obligatory, poking of fun.

I will merely point out that this foolish notion that one can somehow gain some sort of immortality by continuing their bloodline by foisting their brood upon the world is just a mixture of vanity and one's own fear of mortality.

The movie Idiocracy kind of points out the whole "idiots shouldn't be allowed to breed" thing.

So, I guess we've come full circle then ?

+1

37, no kids. I just want a voucher for that so I don't have to smog my old car every year.

Read Tolstoy's "Kreutzer Sonata."

This looks like a pretty good collection of' "shouldn't be allowed to breed" so far. A self-identifying group apparently.

Self righteous non-breeders are at least as annoying as self-righteous parents.

Experts agree.

I think VHEM has been discussed a couple of different times here... but I could be wrong.
I guess old news is better than no news?

Simply don't think I should have kids because I very well doubt I could look after them correctly. I couldn't get past the fact that "Voluntary Human Extinction Movement" sounds remarkably creepy, as does the whole idea, really. Not every choice needs a "movement".

So then, I take it you're the smart guy who gets to decide who's an idiot and who's not...

*sigh*... Probably true. A longtime female friend of mine, fellow misanthrope, used to joke with me about how disgusting and messy babies are, and how despicable most humans are, etc, and now she's gone and got herself knocked up, and sends emails about how she can't wait to see and hold her sweet little baby boy. I try not to pass judgment, being a guy and all, as I can't really grok the hormonal mentality of being a female with that procreative programming. But this is a woman who has all sorts of mental and physical health problems, lives on SSI with her man in Texas, shuffling from one cheap hotel room to her white trash mother-in-law's house to wherever... what chance has that kid of getting a healthy upbringing, even forgetting the forecast of environmental devastation that looms ahead (Peak Oil, climate change, resource wars...)?

I do not advocate total extinction of the human species, but voluntary restrictive breeding would go a long way toward rectifying the damaging consequences of our unsustainable materialist lifestyle. Call me a pessimist or doomsayer, but Nature is going to take care of overpopulation if we choose not to: through famine and disease. Personally, I'd much rather die of old age than of starvation or bird flu or some other horrible natural or manmade plague, or in a world decimated by war and pollution and scarcity...

And non-experts as well

I have known since I was about 14 that I didn't want kids of my own. I was unable to vocalize the reason why, so I always just said I was a selfish asshole because it was what everyone believed anyway. Minus the extremism of it all, this actually fits how I feel, with some exceptions. There is just SO much I feel like I could accomplish with my life that having a child isn't something I'm interested in.

I obviously do not want humans to become extinct, nor do I think that those who want kids should be forbidden to have them, but maybe if people thought a little more...and those who didn't mind, voluntarily refrained from breeding. I could never justify popping out kids, when there are so many kids in the world who don't have enough. I am completely open to adopting one day after I am satisfied with myself...or maybe even fostering. My neighbors have chosen not to have their own children and they foster up to 5 kids at a time, so I get to see everyday what a great thing that is.

If I ever get the urge to actually HAVE a child, I think all I will have to do is ask "Who the hell am I helping by doing this?"

Yes. I was thinking this the entire time I was watching a special on how all the honey bees are dying out because our pesticides have mutated them, along with other reasons. If there are no bees, none of our food gets pollinated, and fruit/vegetables do not grow and *BAM!* famine...everywhere. I can't remember the terminology, for it...the K-line i think? It's the absolute limit the Earth can take before some of the human population has to be wiped out. I think we are quickly reaching that point. I am confident that Mother Earth will take care of it.

Thank you people; I was retching from disgust over this finely developed form of narcissism.

"Stupid people shouldn't fuck"...too bad they still do...and are too stupid to use birth control...perhaps what happened in Stephen King's "The Stand" may be a more likely expectation of what will happen...

We are irresponsible with the Earth! We should die!