Should this be the End?

“Is life worth living?” well in my opinion life is amazing and contains many joys and experiences. This quote is from the article “Should this be the Last Generation” by Peter Singer. I have read this many times to make sure I fully understood his point of view. While I can understand that humans are destroying our planet and it would be better to step back and evaluate our current living situation, it is irrational and poorly thought out to say that the best solution is to sterilize everyone. If we indeed are the last generation and should live life to its fullest, what is to say of our planet after we are gone?

At our current living status, the Earth will deteriorate in a matter of years. While we do not know the amount of damage we have done, we need to continue fighting for our lives. Some of the happinesses that a majority of people on this planet take a part in is being parents. The joys that come with raising and caring for another life and nurturing that life into adulthood.

Not all people feel that the world would be better off without them. While there are widespread problems globally, we just need to change in order to adapt to our current style of living. While I do think that we need a radical overhaul of the way we live in order to sustain and possibly repair the damage that we have done to ourselves and our planet. Singer did make some good arguments that if the population was controlled and kept at a manageable level, our carbon footprint would be reduced, and suffering would be better combated.

Our world is filled with suffering and problems and I wonder what needs to be done for people to realize that there is a problem with what we are doing to ourselves. I can closely relate this because I am reading “Ishmael” in my FFC class, the story talks about how humans do not know how to live. First we need to realize a cold truth that increasing our food supply doesn’t combat poverty and starving people in third world countries it fuels it. The more food we produce the more the population grows, our population is closing on 7 billion and still growing. We have to realize, how many people can our world support...the answer is not this many. Our carbon footprint is increasing and we are destroying our planet at an alarming rate.

Another point that Singer discussed was the fact of illnesses that would be passed down from the parents to the child. Is it morally responsible to conceive a child knowing that their life will be impacted (most likely in a negative way) or should the parents stay away until science can detect problems before conception? Another question we should ask ourselves is that if science develops so that we can alter an unborn child’s genetics to keep it healthy should we?

One example of this would be the novel “The Giver”, by Lois Lowry, the human population was controlled by the elders. For instance if twins were born, the smaller or less one was killed. Parents had to apply to receive children and could only get one boy and one girl. Love did not exist and the society was efficient albeit flawed. Is the scientific predictable aspect of that community superior to the risks and dangers of the one we live in?

In the blog “Antinatalism”, Jim a blogger realizes the importance of this topic. He is happy that some attention is being publicly available to people and he proves his point that this is not the right way by re-posting comments from the article. One of the commentswas very insightful. Overall, while Singer did address some important issues that we will soon be faced with, we need to try and reconcile the problems that we have wielded upon our planet.