Voluntary Human Extinction Movement

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The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, or VHEMT (pronounced "vehement"^[1]), is a movement that calls for the voluntary extinction of the human race.

1 Basic ideas
2 History
3 Support
4 Interviews and media coverage
5 Different Ideas and Scenarios
6 Criticism
7 See also
- 7.1 Compare and contrast
8 References
9 External links

[edit] Basic ideas

The basic concept behind VHEMT is the belief that the earth would be better off without humans, and as such, humans should refuse to breed.^[2] However, this does not mean that they intend to force people not to breed, to kill anyone, or to commit suicide.^[3] This last point is illustrated in their motto, "May we live long and die out".^[4]

[edit] History

Les U. Knight is credited with giving the name Voluntary Human Extinction Movement to the philosophy,^[5], is the owner of VHEMT.org, and is cited as the founder, de facto leader or "prime avatar" in different publications.^[6]^[7]^[8]

[edit] Support

VHEMT recognizes two levels of support:

"Volunteers" are people who believe in the VHEMT goal of eventual human extinction, and have decided to have no children (or no more, if they already have children).
"Supporters" are people who believe that "intentional creation of one more of us by any of us is unjustifiable at this time, but extinction of our species goes too far".^{[citation needed]}

VHEMT does not request participants to declare which type of member they are, nor does the movement require the choice to be implicitly made.^[9]

[edit] Interviews and media coverage

There has been much media coverage of the ideas of Knight and of VHEMT.

In 2001, Knight appeared on Hannity & Colmes to present VHEMT's ideology. On the program, he stated that "as long as there's one breeding pair of homo sapiens, there's too great a threat to the biosphere."^[10] He also expressed no hope for voluntary human extinction, but stated that "it is the right thing to do."

Knight was also interviewed by MSNBC's Tucker Carlson, during which he debated with the host on the merits of the movement.^[11] Knight stressed the movement's peaceful, nonviolent goals and reiterated that the movement's motivation is environmental protection.

[edit] Different Ideas and Scenarios

Some VHEMT members think that those who say a human extinction will bring a new birth to the planet's biosystem is just an Utopian idea. They affirm that this viewpoint belongs to a naive and classicistic reasoning. Nature is an entropic structure in itself, humankind is a product of its own. To any wider perspective, (e.g. existential sciences like anthroposophy) the universe is a functional, ordered construction and humanity is its purpose. It is a fundamental part of it according to the human instrumentality. Therefore human extinction would lead to a cosmic paradox. At all events they consider themselves VHEMT supporters/volunteers because a hypothetic state of inexistence would be better than a catastrophic and painful existence for every creature.

[edit] Criticism

VHEMT spreads its message through the Internet, thus reaching mainly wealthier nations. A few of these countries already have fertility rates below the replacement rate and are thus already trending toward "human extinction," or at least a reduced population. However, according to VHEMT^[12], wealthier nations have the largest impact on world resources.

Transhumanists and other critics reject the VHEMT assumption that humans have ceased to be a part of nature. Instead they argue that nature has, in humanity, become conscious and self-reflective for the first time.^[13] On this view it is inconsistent, for those who claim to value the biosphere, intentionally to seek to extinguish one of its creations. Furthermore, as transhumanist Nick Bostrom has argued, only humanity is in a position to avert existential risks to the biosphere, such as asteroid impact.^[14]