The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us

by Adam Kirsch

Should we welcome the end of humanity?

In this blistering book about the history of an idea, one of our leading critics draws on his dazzling range and calls our attention to a seemingly inconceivable topic that is being seriously discussed: that the end of humanity's reign on earth is imminent, and that we should welcome it. Kirsch journeys through literature, philosophy, science, and popular culture, to identify two strands of thinking: Anthropocene antihumanism says that our climate destruction has doomed humanity and we should welcome our extinction, while Transhumanism believes that genetic engineering and artificial intelligence will lead to new forms of life superior to humans.

Kirsch's introduction of thinkers and writers from Roger Hallam to Jane Bennett, David Benatar to Nick Bostrom, Patricia MacCormack to Ray Kurzweil, Ian McEwan to Richard Powers, will make you see the current moment in a new light. The revolt against humanity has already spread beyond the fringes of the intellectual world, and it can transform politics and society in profound ways--if it hasn't already.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Science, Audiobook, Sustainability, Politics, History

104 pages, Paperback

First published January 10, 2023

About the author

Adam Kirsch is the author of two collections of poems and several books of poetry criticism. A senior editor at the New Republic and a columnist for Tablet, he also writes for The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.

Reviews

[Krista · Rating 5 out of 5]

From Silicon Valley boardrooms to rural communes to academic philosophy departments, a seemingly inconceivable idea is being seriously discussed: that the end of humanity’s reign on Earth is imminent, and that we should welcome it. The revolt against humanity is still new enough to appear outlandish, but it has already spread beyond the fringes of the intellectual world, and in the coming years and decades it has the potential to transform politics and society in profound ways.

The Revolt Against Humanity is a fascinating exploration of the idea that humanity’s end is nigh, and that that’s not a bad thing. Compiling the recent history of this idea as written about by poets, scientists, philosophers, and novelists, columnist/editor/poet Adam Kirsch divides our impending extinction into two schools of thought: The Anthropocene Antihumanists (who believe that we are killing the Earth to the point that it can’t sustain us; and good riddance) and Transhumanists (who believe that we are approaching the “Singularity”; the point at which we will create the AI that replaces us as Earth’s so-called apex creation). At heart a philosophical treatise, Kirsch repeatedly makes it clear (through the writing of others) that there really is no point to the continuance of the human race: we are bad for the environment, bad to each other, not particularly happy as individuals, and there’s nothing inherently valuable in the way our species has evolved to interact with reality. I was surprised and provoked by many of the statements in this book, but I didn’t actually find it bleak: the events predicted by the assembled experts will either happen or they won’t, but there is value in contemplating how to find meaning in the present (at both personal and societal levels) if humanity doesn’t have a long future. I think that Kirsch definitely met his brief with this and I can’t give fewer than five stars. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

The antihumanist future and the transhumanist future are opposites in most ways, except the most fundamental: they are worlds from which we have disappeared, and rightfully so. The attempt to imagine and embrace a world without us is the thread that connects the figures discussed in this book.

I highlighted so many passages and ideas, and they are for the most part self-explanatory, so I’m just going to assemble some lightly edited copy/paste bullet points without commentary:

• Antihumanists reject any claim humanity might once have had to admiration and solidarity. Instead, they invest their admiration in the non-human: animals, plants, rocks, water, air. Any of these entities is superior to humanity, for the simple reason that it doesn’t destroy all the others.

• Patricia MacCormack, whose book The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020), calls for “an end to the human both conceptually as exceptionalized and actually as a species.” The second part of this demand is to be met by “the deceleration of human life through cessation of reproduction” and by “advocating for suicide [and] euthanasia.”

• David Benatar appeals to our compassion for humans yet unborn, arguing that the best thing we could do for them is to make sure they stay that way. The title of Benatar’s book Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence (2006) captures the paradox at the heart of his argument…When it comes to pain and pleasure, he argues, our duties are not symmetrical : “While there is a duty to avoid bringing suffering people into existence, there is no duty to bring happy people into being.” But according to Benatar, there is no such thing as a life that contains more happiness than suffering. In the final account, every life runs into the red; “there is no net benefit to coming into existence and thus coming into existence is never worth its costs.”

• In Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline (2019 ), Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson write that a child born today will reach middle age in a world that is “cleaner, safer, quieter. The oceans will start to heal and the atmosphere cool — or at least stop heating.” The combination of population decline with advances in green technology means that E. O. Wilson’s half-Earth proposal might come true even without deliberate action. By 2100, we might be using less than half as much energy and land as we do today.

I was surprised to read that the declining birthrate might so quickly lead to environmental renewal, but even so:

• A study of 600 people of childbearing age published in the journal Climatic Change in 2020 found that 92 percent believed that the future would be worse than the present, while less than 1 percent said it would be better.

The only thing that makes humanity unique, transhumanists believe, is our ability to compensate for our biological weaknesses with the power of technology. Slower than horses, weaker than elephants, less versatile than roaches, humans dominate them all because we are able to change ourselves, while they are stuck with the abilities nature gave them. It’s not recent technologies like pacemakers that make us cyborg-like; we have always been cyborgs, because technology has always been a fundamental part of human being.

• French thinker Julien Offray de la Mettrie, whose 1748 pamphlet “Man Is a Machine” made a witty but serious case that “the human body is a machine that winds its own springs.” There is no metaphysical gulf between human and animal, or between animate and inanimate matter; the only difference has to do with how matter is organized. As La Mettrie puts it, “Nature has only one and the same dough for all, she has only varied the amount of yeast.”

• In 2008, English longevity researcher Aubrey de Grey posited that the first person to live to be 1,000 years old had already been born.

• For transhumanists, the singularity serves the same imaginative purposes that the perpetual motion machine did for generations of engineers: it promises to give us something for nothing. Scientific problems that are currently beyond our ability to solve, such as mind uploading and interstellar travel, can be adjourned until the singularity, when a superintelligent AI will solve them for us. So it is tempting to conclude that, like perpetual motion, the singularity is an impossible fantasy. But AI violates no law of physics, and the best-informed researchers seem confident that it can and will be achieved.

• David Bostrom observes, “the expected arrival date for AI ‘has been receding at a rate of one year per year’ ever since it was first predicted”. But he describes his work as “philosophy with a deadline”: at some point, he is certain the question of how to coexist with nonhuman minds will have to be answered. What will become of humanity when we have to relinquish our position as the planet’s protagonist — when history is no longer identical with human history?

• For physicist Michio Kaku, a SIM (Substrate Independent Mind) translated into photons is what will enable us to conquer the immense distances of outer space. “One day we may be able to send our connectomes into outer space on giant laser beams, eliminating a number of problems in interstellar travel,” he writes in The Future of Humanity. “I call this laser porting, and it may free our consciousness to explore the galaxy or even the universe at the speed of light, so we don’t have to worry about the obvious dangers of interstellar travel.”

Incidentally, Kirsch sums up the position of each side through recent fiction (of particular interest to me as I’ve read both novels). On the antihumanist side, Kirsch relates events from Richard Powers’ award-winning ecofiction The Overstory (and in particular, a scene in which a scientist drinks poison “as a demonstration of how human beings can best advance the cause of nature”). By contrast, Kirsch examines Ian McEwan’s transhumanist novel Machines Like Me (in which early AI robots choose to turn themselves off once they learn the ugliness at the hearts of the humans they are programmed to emulate, “There’s nothing in all their beautiful code that could prepare Adam and Eve for Auschwitz.”) If the idea that humanity is facing extinction (and that that is a good thing) is a thoroughly twenty-first century concept, it’s unsurprising to read that it’s the novelists who are tolling the bell.

If rational thought leads to the conclusion that a world without human beings in it is superior to one where we exist, then doing away with humanity might be the consummation of humanism. There may be no choice but to accept the paradoxical promise that Franz Kafka made a century ago: “There is hope, an infinite amount of hope, but not for us.”

[David Wineberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always look forward to Columbia Global Reports. They tend to be short and jampacked. A single topic, usually controversial, intensely written up, with insights not available on facebook or twitter, let alone linkedin. This latest one is The Revolt Against Humanity, by Adam Kirsch. It does not disappoint.


It could be that humans disappear altogether, selected out of existence by a plague or a war or by an unlivable change in the ecosphere. Because homo sapiens is not just parasitic and detrimental to the planet, it is by far the most invasive species, and we all know how destructive invasive species can be, settling where they don’t belong and upsetting the balance of everything. Even its waste is horrific. It’s the only species whose waste is toxic to the planet instead of beneficial. I could go on. Doesn’t matter. They’re gone for the purposes of this book.


There are two sides to this story. Some think Man is on his way out, and sooner than later. And that he deserves it. There are far too many. They’ve caused horrendous perversions of the Earth through overfarming, overfertilizing, making their cattle the largest measure of biomass in the realm, wiping out thousands of other species, burning everything in sight, etc. etc. That this cannot go on indefinitely is self-evident to them. And it’s not such a big deal. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that species come and go in an endless parade. It is the normal state of being on planet Earth. This particularly nasty species will end just as almost every other one has, without fanfare or mourning or reprieve. The fact that we can see it coming and, needless to add, that it is us we’re discussing, is what is different.


The other group supports what futurist Ray Kurzweil calls the singularity, in which the contents of everyone’s brain is uploaded into an electronic brain data warehouse, which continues to operate based on all its accumulated and available human wisdom. Plague-proof, ecology-proof and likely even war-proof, Kirsch posits this outcome as feasible. It means that human life is not for nothing, that wisdom gained through living will not have to be relearned, and progress will be achieved faster and easier. It might even mean an individual’s personality and character might survive forever in this state. It’s a kind of immortality. Or hell, depending.


There is also a subset of the tech-adapted, often called cyborgs, in which parts of humans are replaced by machinery, giving rise to a race of supermen, not subject to ordinary mortality tables. This is already well underway, quite remarkably without any controversy, protest or outrage. People have gotten used to the idea of pacemakers, artificial limbs, brainwave-controlled electronic hands, and of course organ transplants, from other people, animals, or grown in labs. At what point does the original human being become a cyborg is not even asked any more. We accept that such things are necessary for some people, and in some cases, they are improvements. So cyborgs don’t participate in the controversy of what comes after we’ve gone, because they don’t alter mortality - yet.


The wipeout scenario of humanity is actually favored by a growing number of people. Kirsch calls them the Anthropocene anti-humanists, a very Gulliverian term. The singularity fans are called transhumanists. That’s the whole setup for the book.


Kirsch does a literature review. He has collected pithy quotes from the proponents of both sides. They both make interesting points as well as a lot of nonsense. And neither side has the wherewithal to make a claim of reality for their position. The anti-humanists just think enough is enough, and the transhumanists just don’t think there’s ever enough. They hate the very concept of mortality. Jonathan Swift would understand.


The anti-humanists are really well established. Kirsch cites anxiety and depression everywhere, along with steeply declining birthrates. Young people are not the least certain they want to bring new children into a world doomed to cataclysm. It’s bad enough if they themselves are to be the last generation. But to saddle their own offspring with that fate is not merely undesirable, but quite avoidable. He finds a South African author who says the best thing we can do for the unborn is to make sure they stay that way (David Benatar, Better Never To Have Been).


Kirsch says the environmental crisis is what really drives anti-humanists. He says proponents are “really environmental(ists) in a hurry.” In my own book, I have likened the Earth’s action against homo sapiens to be like a dog shaking off water. It will be convulsive for a while, but ultimately, the planet will settle down and move on, clean and dry. So I can relate here.


At some point, religion has to enter into it, and whether or not the universe is even valid without the presence of Man. Oddly, Kirsch does not also evaluate whether Man, with all his invasive nastiness, is really what God had in mind for a mirror image of himself. As usual, nothing can be resolved from arguing over religion. Kirsch wisely just puts it out there as contributing to the argument.


The transhumanists though, are really up against it. First of all, science and technology are lagging very badly in getting to the singularity. There is major doubt whether it can be achieved before some disaster wipes out the species first. Kirsch doesn’t go there, but the fact is, we don’t even know how the brain creates a memory or how it calls it up. My favorite example (https://medium.com/the-straight-dope/... think of your first kiss. This is something we typically have not thought about in years, yet it can be recalled instantly. We have no idea how this works. So how do transhumanists upload all the content of a brain? And then employ it?


Then there is the all-important support feature, which Kirsch does not consider either. If humans have disappeared, who is going to maintain, manage and upgrade the massive systems required to keep the singularity operating? And what exactly will this singularity do alone in the world? Travel to another planet just because it has the 100,000 years it would need available to do it?


From this you can see that once again, a Columbia Global Report inspires much cogitation. It exposes a concept most people spend zero time considering, and fills in just enough detail to make readers want to argue.


This is what I appreciate in the series.


David Wineberg



If you liked this review, I invite you to read more in my book The Straight Dope. It’s an essay collection based on my first thousand reviews and what I learned. Right now it’s FREE for Prime members, otherwise — cheap! Reputed to be fascinating and a superfast read. And you already know it is well-written. https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Dope-...

[Osore Misanthrope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Нама, а(нти)хуманистима, “припада тек прексутрашњица”, сада, када се зна да је свемир, а тиме и човек, производ случаја, а не судбине; Homo rapiens, та безначајна, краткотрајна, бесциљна флатуленција у кружењу материје и сустицању еволуционих механизама и културних гибања, та биокултура, бесмислена је исто колико и све што постоји и не постоји, од батине до бога…* Овај бескрупулозни уништилац светова пао је са своје Пирамиде, пресекао је грану четинарског Дрвета на којој седи и сада се види уплетеним у Мрежу живота коју трује и нагриза. “Сви су на једнаком ступњу савршенства”, сродни, коегзистирају у нестајању – треба ли то срамно двоножно лице да остане самотно, у пустињи Еремозоика, на инфузији биосинтетика, животној подршци које се стиди и садашњи агроекосистем? Може ли се надићи или заобићи човек? Јесмо ли спремни да изумремо у спокоју, не зато што је апокалипса лепа и лака – јер (кошмарни) сан не жели свако – већ да бисмо ослободили бића својих злодела, своје доминације, експлоатације и анихилације? Поништимо себе – апстинирајмо од репродукције, убијмо се весело, озеленимо се, обезнадимо – обезљудимо планету! Авај, крик природе не вибрира на фреквенцији погодној за тако прљаве уши! Шта вреди ако након 2064. бројност људске популације почне да пада – већ сада је касно! (Било је пет до дванаест када сам ја пре више од пола свог живота озелењен, док је Грета седела на ноши, а сада је поноћ увелико прошла, глуво је доба, зао час!) Зар сублимно – фасцинација и језа, задивљеност и страх пред већим и моћнијим – није уступило место, не више грамзивости, већ сажаљењу? О, бедни оптимисти, ви сте начисто слепи, ви верујете, смрдите на тамјан, ви сте негативни коефицијент корелације спрам коефицијента интелигенције! Како само овај отцепљени, озлеђени, отуђени кукавац проклизава на кору антропоцентричне банане, пружајући своје сазнајне краке да би потчинио и прилагодио, а не да би спознао! Утилитарац-комунитарац, фаталиста-миопичар, хуманиста-аутофаг, некрофил-некротроф…а кад помислиш да си ован предводник, можеш ли заклати своје стадо? Клепетуше клапћу. Саплићу се и енвиронменталисти од оног соја што израста у лажну наду у боље сутра за човека и са човеком. “Ако убиство бога захтева рођење натчовека, онда убиство природе захтева стварање постчовека – новог бића достојног задатка да влада денатурализованим светом.” Овај лапсус исправљамо једначином Homo rapiens = Homo technicus, и стављамо је изван скупа постхуманиста, са њиховим љупким, али неприменљивим перспективизмом: најлакше је ходати у изанђалим сандалама плебса; ићи другачије и више, значи корачати опасније, трпети ударце, псовке и пљувања говњиве гомиле, бити другост, а не посматрати друге, бити у скафандеру и бити ванземаљац, не више ни и-и, ни или-или, него ја јесам…

Али коме говорити, жуборити и роморити? Трансхуманистима, техно-тератогеничарима, тим творцима чудовишности чија маска за заваривање бљешти у ружичастом тону, а издаје се за нешто зелено? Онима чије свето тројство су генетика, нанотехнологија и роботика, а грал се зове STE(A)M? Стратегијом обећање лудом радовање до нове врсте човека или машине! Ово варничи на наше изумирање, али у чију корист? Треба ли још и космос да звечи као олук, да одводи природу као отпад, да је ометали, оцрни, меланкологизује? Каква би то алхемија била! Усавршени, киборзи без жеља и тежњи, углачане биоскулптуре! Али њима који не познају мудрост одвратности, треба свест да би продуховила и проветрила, а заправо зачађавила, дивну бесмислену клопку васељене, окужила је запахом антропског начела. Нама, аветима ахуманистима, не треба ништа, јер ми смо одавно мртви. Чекајте само да видите трансхуманизам као нови атавизам, овде, на трезновитом стубишту. Овдашњи дух времена је труо, биополитику обавија уцрвљали гипс, она скичи у стези измишљеног и замишљеног напретка, бедног холограма.

За сада, људски мозак је моћнији од рачунарског. Муров закон: рачунарски капацитет се дуплира сваке ~2 године. Да ли су ментални процеси сводљиви на конектом? Хоће ли постојати савршени краниоскоп? Може ли се направити силиконска реплика угљеничног мозга, мозак-на-чипу који може да се учита у киберпростор, очовечи виртуелну стварност и простетизује метаверзум? Компјутронијум, џиновски ум – програмирана супстанца која носи информацију – обузима свемир: сингуларност. “Свети грал вештачке интелигенције за трансхуманисте је општа вештачка интелигенција (AGI) – рачунарски мозак способан да учи о било чему (…) и да се самоусавршава без граница, док не постане способнији од свих људи заједно. (…) Научни проблеми које тренутно не можемо да решимо, попут учитавања ума у рачунар и међузвезданог путовања, могу бити одложени до сингуларности када ће их решити суперинтелигентни AI. Ово нас вуче на закључак да је сингуларност неостварива фантазија.”

• Проблем спајалице: AI коме је дат тривијални задатак попут прављења спајалица, може да нас изманипулише, отргне се контроли и почне да претвара све у спајалице, и да на крају уништи и нас. (~Gray-goo hypothesis and ecophagy.)
• Проблем других умова: немогућност уласка у туђу лобању; ако се рачунар понаша исто као човек, уживљавамо се и претпостављамо му свест идентичну нашој – пролази Турингов тест јер га не разликујемо од човека.
• Проблем поравнања: вештачку интелигенцију “треба дизајнирати тако да дели наше циљеве и вредности. (…) [З]ашто [баш] наши циљеви треба да превладају”?
• “The modern idea of human extinction (…) implies that our disappearance will change nothing. The planet and the universe will go on in exactly the same way after humanity ceases to exist, except that other animals and plants will have a better chance to flourish. The death of the human race is as cosmically meaningless as the death of an individual, since both are soon swallowed up by oblivion.”
• “Today, scientific humanity can no longer answer the question of why it exists. All we can know is how it came to exist, as a result of billions of years of natural selection. There is no more reason for us to be here than there is for animals or plants, stones or stars.”

* Академскије: живот нема инхерентни смисао (нихилизам), осим оног који му ми дамо (атеистички егзистенцијализам), али је и тада обесмишљен смрћу – ништавилом (апсурдизам).

🎵 DARK FUNERAL - The End Of Human Race (Quarantine Video)

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

A chilling exploration of "antihumanist" (people should voluntarily die off for the good of the planet) and "transhumanist" (people should continue to work to bring a post-biological intelligence into existence to succeed our inferior biologic embodiment) philosophies and the proponents of these humanist views.

Kirsch is able to bring to this analysis an almost completely impartial examination, devoting this slim book to attempting to present the philosophical underpinnings to these 2 belief systems thoroughly and without disparagement. He does an admirable job of exploring the ultimate goals of these 2 seemingly opposite schools of thought, and the subtitle is quite apt: "imagining a future without us".

I happen to be of the camp that isn't so apocalyptic so, while I was very interested to examine these 2 humanist views, I remain unpersuaded that the ultimate ethos is to work toward the eradication of humanity.

[Josh S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating topic and excellently written. I hadn't heard of the author before but I'd love to read more of his writing!

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My hot take, as someone who was once deeply committed to a secular/atheistic/humanistic/materialistic worldview: Without God, there is no objective value. For a while, we (as a civilization) can skate along the surface and take the Judeo-Christian values as assumed (e.g. "of course every life matters!"), and we can do our best to set up ethical standards or structures to justify them. But inevitably without the undergirding authority of a living God to whom we answer, our ethical structures must crumble because we cannot meaningfully locate value or worth into the atoms/quarks/quantum fields that underlie the whole of our modern ontology. Why is the arrangement of atoms in a child more valuable than the arrangement of atoms in a rock? (The attempts to locate meaning in "patterns of information" appear more sophisticated but run into the same issue. Why does one pattern of information matter more than another?)

Of course, we all sense the flaws with reductionistic materialism. For one, the world is full of the "sublime": ineffable beauty and structure that fills us with wonder. For another, we also sense that something is wrong with the world and, even more so, in us. We know on some level that we are somehow corrupted and we are at a loss as to how to fix this. This drives massive internal dissonance because, again, we cannot locate either beauty or corruption in our list of mathematical equations or physical laws that supposedly govern all things.

We cannot persist in a state of nihilism, as if truly nothing mattered. We are creatures that must and inevitably do constantly assign value. So from the fixed secular assumption of materialism, we must identify other sources of meaning beyond ourselves (excluding God from that list out of hand). In our current moment, there are a few major options being presented: nation-states, specific political ideologies (or simply individual "strongmen"), nature, technology, etc. The ones that appeal most to you likely reflect your upbringing, political affinity, etc.

This book focuses on nature and technology as attempted sources of meaning. If nature is somehow a higher good than humanity, then our rapacious, foolish destruction of nature must be stopped-- we must embrace a collective, civilization-level suicide. If technology has the key to unlock superintelligences, then this is our god and savior and we must accelerate technologically as rapidly as possible. It is fascinating that both of these movements are motivated by deep moral arguments/perspectives, given by individuals who would argue, on the whole, that morals are social constructions. However, without God in the picture, we are flying completely blind, and it is no wonder that we find ourselves driven eventually to the extremes of suicide, either through metaphorical or literal self-annihilation.

Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. (Hebrews 1:3)

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

At about a hundred pages, The Revolt Against Humanity thrives in its limited scope. Adam Kirsch presents two radical philosophies with the potential to shape our world: Anthropocene antihumanism and transhumanism. The former believes that our actions have doomed the planet, and that we should welcome the end of humanity's reign. The latter argues that we can transcend our limitations through genetic engineering, AI and other advancements. Despite their opposing stances on technology, both theories are rooted in the same premise: that the collapse of the environment is inevitable.

Hardly cheerful reading, but what I appreciate about Kirsch is that he isn't focused on the rightness and wrongness of each strand of thinking. He even sidesteps whether these visions of the future are likely to come true. He's chiefly concerned with influence: how likely are these theories to spread through society, and what are their limitations? Broad questions about humanity's role on Earth, how we seek purpose, define consciousness and the like fill these pages. This inquisitive approach kept me engaged throughout, providing a new angle from which to consider the issues of our world.

A brisk, destabilizing read, The Revolt Against Humanity is my go-to recommendation on the topic of climate change and the future. It provides a compelling overview of theories that are quite fringe, but whose influence can be felt once you know what to look out for.

[Kerry Pickens · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author Adam Kirsch is a senior editor at the New Republic and a columnist for Tablet, he also writes for The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. Kirsch's book is a review of the published work on the climate crisis including philosophy, science, and popular culture. The focus of the book is two divergent theories: 1) Anthropocene antihumanism says that our climate destruction has doomed humanity, and 2) Transhumanism believes that genetic engineering and artificial intelligence will provide a solution. Kirsch's review includes a wide range of published work including authors Ian McEwan and Richard Powers. My personal favorite of the works he reviews is Roy Scranton's Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization. There is a bluntness to Scanton's writing that has been described as cathartic, and his anger reminds me a bit of the comedian Bill Hicks. His writing is like Christ's Sermon on the Mount.

[Richard Cho · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eye-opening.

I always liked Kirsch's writing, especially his literary criticism. I can't exactly pinpoint what I liked about his insights, but his broad understanding of literature and his contextual understanding in the light of current event was always enlightening.

This book is for misanthropes, not for those kinds who hate humanity from the bigoted perspective but from the grief at the incorrigible, destructive human nature.

Just like dinosaurs, we will disappear. This is certain. And with this fact in mind, Kirsch introduces two sects (Anthropocene antihumanism and Transhumanism) who foresee the proper end of us in two different approaches. 1) The world is better without us, so it is good to hurry the end of humanity. 2) Let humans live as machines, with only consciousness alive and bodies dead, envisioning a utopia without human fallacies.

For Anthropocene antihumanism, even the environmentalists are the subject of criticism, because they'd like to save nature for the SAKE OF HUMANS, so that we can exist longer, not for the sake of all the denizens of this Mother Earth. "Today's environmentalism is about people."

What's depressing is that it is too late to turn back, or even to slow down the destruction. The wheel is turning, gaining more momentum, no friction possibility to slow it down.

We need "self-restrained," but look at our culture, especially the liberal democracy that is the western culture. Self-restrain comes as anathema to well-being, which requires good job, more money, and more individualism. If people do self-restrain, it's mainly for the spiritual reason, but again, this liberal democracy is bankrupt on spirit business, with the secular values triumphing over all the traditional ones.

It is Kirsch's magic that both ideas came to me as immensely appealing. His research is far-reaching; mostly refers to non-fiction books but seldom references fiction and poems, like Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me and Richard Powers's The Overstory

The writing is dense, and he spoke about numerous interesting ideas, such as the existential threat, the disappearance of our values, etc.

Humanity itself is the anti-natural force, since the beginning of homo sapiens.

Holocene -> anthropocene
----------------------------------------------------------------

Humanity's domination of the planet is so extensive that evolution must be redefined.

In the Anthropocene, nature becomes a reflection of humanity for the first time.

Bill McKibben's The End of Nature: "We have killed off nature...." For Nietzsche, too, the crucial fact wasn't only that God was dead, but that he died at human hands: "We have killed him--you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea?"

Boulter: We have grown up to give reverence to the advanced characters of Homo Sapiens, and now we know they are flawed. Aggressive selfishness, and insatiable enough to destroy whole ecosystems.

Humans are not the point: The first step in changing our picture of the world is to change the language we use to describe it. That is a task not for politicians and activists but philosophers and storytellers, who renew language by challenging it to take on unfamiliar forms.

Benatar: The concern that humans will not exist at some future time is either a symptom of the human arrogance... or is some misplaced sentimentalism.

GNR-- genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics.
cyborg = cybernetic organism

... what tannshumanism rejects isn't simply mortality and suffering, but the very idea of a fixed human nature.
...the only thing permanent about us is our need to change.

mind uploading

Say that programmers experimenting with an AI give it a trvial goal, such as figuring out how to maximize the production of paper clips. The AI, lacking ahuman understanding of context, might well understand this to mean that it should turn every atom on Earth into paper clips. If it foresees that human beings would try to interfere with this mission, say by unplugging or reprogramming it, it might think that the best way to achieve its goal is to exterminate us. In the same way, an AI might decide that the universe is more likely to achieve its destiny of becoming a giant mind if there are no erratic human beings to get in the way, and decide to wipe us out.

Turing Test: Having a person to speak with two beings behind a curtain, and figure out which is human and which a robot.

Robot: alignment problem - hot research topic in A.I.

Liberalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. By elevating free choice to the highest value, it deprives us of the norms and customs that ought to guide our choices.

Problem with enlightenment is that it deprives us of the motive for sacrifice.
But ultimate sacrifices require absolute rewards, and these are hard to find in a liberal, rationalist worldview.
Liberalism is under increasing attack from within as well as without.

There is no doubt, however, who stands to love in such a conflict: traditional humanists, with their old-fashioned belief that the individual human being is the source of all value.

[ᛚᚨᚱᚲᚨ × ᚠᛖᚾᚱᛁᚱ (Semi hiatus) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We're fucked. The only questions are how soon and how badly."
- Michael Boulter

You can find the full review on my blog!

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Revolt Against Humanity (2023) by Adam Kirsch is a genuinely interesting examination of various movements that do not have humanity and human well being as part of their core objectives. Kirsch is a poet and editor at New Republic.

Kirsch examines various environmental philosophies that are explicitly anti-human and also describes and contrasts the trans-human movement that sees cyborgs and AI as the future of thinking beings.

It’s quite fascinating to read thinkers who believe that humanity is a bad thing and who look forward to our extinction. It’s very clear that there are environmental thinkers like this.

The sections on the trans-humanists are more sympathetic, the idea that enhanced humans will make amazing art and push knowledge further is more appealing to me. The trans-humanists do see humanity as a great thing though, but one that will create things that transcend ourselves.

The Revolt Against Humanity is impressively short and very thought provoking.

[Mike Horne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but I have no sympathy for these people.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sharp, succinct overview of two philosophical approaches to humanity's demise and its value. I want to devour nearly every source discussed in this book.

[Willow]

We're doooooooomed.

[Peter Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Coming Religious Wars.
The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us by Adam Kirsch

https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Against...
I read this short, interesting book on the plane during my trip to India in December 2023. There was no intentional connection between the trip and the book. The book - "monograph" might be a better description - had the advantage of being lightweight for carrying for 40 hours being about 100 pages in length and being a paperback did not need to be put into "airplane mode" on take-offs.
Adam Kirsch is a literary critic. He's written books on various literary subjects, including Calvin Trilling. In this case, he turns his attention to developing literary/philosophical themes that challenge the humanistic assumptions that are the roots on which the discipline of literary criticism stands. Literary criticism is about the human institution that is literature. Literature is something done by humans as a way of understanding human existence. Humanity as the measure of all things is baked into the project of literature, e.g., stories may be about the actions of gods, but if humans are to understand these stories that they are telling, they will scale them against human beings.
Kirsch identifies two variants in the "revolt against humanity." These two tendencies - I am loathe to dignify them with the name of "movement" or "school" - seem to be in fundamental disagreement with each other but on further reflection share much in common.
Kirsch calls one tendency is "Anthropocene antihumanism." Kirsch explains that Anthropocene antihumanism ("AA") is inspired by revulsion at humanity's destruction of the natural environment. AA is thoroughly premised on the idea of the "Anthropocene" - a geological era that can be identified by human activity at the geological level, e.g., the widespread distribution of artificial plastics in the geological record. This era is also defined as one in which human intervention is inherently destructive:
In the twenty-first century, Anthropocene antihumanism offers a much more radical response to a much deeper ecological crisis. It says that our self-destruction is now inevitable, and what's more significant, that we should welcome it as a sentence we have justly passed on ourselves. Some antihumanist thinkers look forward to the actual extinction of our species, while others predict that even if some people survive the coming environmental apocalypse, civilization as a whole is doomed. Like all truly radical movements, Anthropocene antihumanism begins not with a political program but with a philosophical idea. It is a rejection of humanity's traditional role as Earth's protagonist, the most important being in creation.
This book is a broad survey of the texts and writers that bear on the topic. Not surprisingly, several science fiction writers are mentioned, particularly in the section on Transhumanism. In the section on AA, Kirsch starts with the 2006 film "Children of Men." I haven't seen this movie (based on a book by English mystery writer P.D. James) but the scene he describers and its resonance with recent actions by Extinction Rebellion and other trendy anti-oil activists makes me want to repair this oversight.
Extinction Rebellion exists. It uses violent rhetoric like extinction and genocide despite its nominal commitment to non-violence. It has spawned other movements, many of whom do all they can to inconvenience the lives of other human beings in the name of the higher good.
I guess I am jaded. This is my second time around with the existential destruction of humanity. The last time was the 1980s when Leftists were assuring us that we had to unilaterally surrender our nuclear weapons to Communists because Western Democracies were the faction that put the world at risk of global nuclear annihilation. Kirsch mentions this prior point where humanity had to face its extinction (amplified by ideological politics):
The idea that life on Earth faces imminent catastrophe due to human recklessness is not entirely new. Since the late 1940s, humanity has lived with the knowledge that it has the power to annihilate itself at any moment through nuclear war. Indeed, the climate anxiety of the 2010s can be seen as a return of apocalyptic fears that went briefly into abeyance after the end of the Cold War. Climate activism features some of the same tropes as nuclear activism: sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg urging the US Congress to avert climate disaster was reminiscent of ten-year-old Samantha Smith, who in 1982 wrote a widely publicized letter to Soviet premier Yuri Andropov asking him to avert nuclear war. (p.18.)
Ah, yes, Samantha Smith, the Ur-Greta Thunberg.
The Left is endlessly uncreative, like Satan.
Kirsch minimizes nuclear extinction because surviving nuclear war merely involves practicing the values of peace and cooperation, which "we already preach." On the other hand, the ecological holocaust - presumably global warming - arises from the ideology of human flourishing which we believe is right and good. Humanity becomes a kind of parasite, destroying the life of the rest of the Earth:
Instead, it becomes part of a zero-sum competition that pits the gratification of human desires against the well-being of all of nature - not just animals and plants, but soil, stones, and water. If that's the case, then humanity can no longer be considered a part of creation or nature, as science and religion teach in their different ways. Instead, it must be seen as an anti-natural force that has usurped and abolished nature, substituting its own will for the processes that once appeared to be the immutable basis of life on Earth.
This understanding of humanity's place outside and against the natural order is summed up in the term "Anthropocene," "Anthropocene," which in the last decade has become one of the most important concepts in the humanities and social sciences. Technically speaking, the Anthropocene is a proposed designation for a new geological era to follow the Holocene, the era that began about 11,000 years ago with the end of the last ice age. The International Commission on Stratigraphy, the scientific body that formally determines the names and dates of geological epochs, has been considering since 2008 whether to determine that we have now entered the Anthropocene or "human era" instead. (19–20.)
One can't help but notice that separating humanity from "nature" is a religious move. Anyone who has tried to make sense of Cardinal De Lubec's musing about "pura natura" can attest to this point. Nature is simply everything in the created world; supernature is the natural world with grace added.

The religious dimension becomes explicit when Kirsch points out:
In our time, the Anthropocene poses an equally profound challenge. If the killing of God demands the birth of the superman, the killing of nature demands the creation of the posthuman - a new being equal to the task of ruling a denaturalized world. The idea of the posthuman gives rise to aspirations that are both ideological - a new way of thinking about what we are - and technological - an actual transformation of the world and of our own bodies. For the same technological power that enables us to remold nature also makes it possible to remake ourselves, in ways that used to seem equally unthinkable. Once we have done away with nature as a limiting concept, why should human nature be an exception? (p. 23–24.)
Proponents of AA have a theory of human anthropology just as Christianity has its anthropology of original sin. The AA version zeroes in on humanity's innate concupiscence which makes human being's capitalistic. Human sin begins with humanity's insatiable appetite for comfort, security, food, and housing. To give nature some space to exist, humans must voluntarily relinquish control over the world. To round out, the intrinsic religious dimension of environmentalism, humanity is to become ascetic and this asceticism will be grounded in mysticism. Recognizing that people renounce things because of a commitment to a goal, including religious goals, environmentalists seek to cultivate a "mystique around the idea of nature, in order to encourage sacrifices on its behalf." Thus, Biologist E.O. Wilson argues that "nature deserves reverence" because nature is "amazingly comprehensible with so many secrets to unlock."
Some radical environmentalists view "mystical asceticism" as leaving too much power in the hands of human beings:
In short, as English writer Paul Kingsnorth complains in his 2011 essay "Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist," "Today's environmentalism is about people." Kingsnorth is one of the most interesting and significant thinkers about the Anthropocene because he reverses the usual terms of the discussion. Instead of thinking of the environment as the problem, he thinks of the existence of human beings as the problem. (p. 29–30.)
So, humans are the problem.
It is a short step from there to finding that humans are evil:
If he must choose between nature and humanity, Kingsnorth chooses the former, with full awareness of where such a decision may lead. In the celebrated essay "Dark Ecology," he writes about his uncomfortable realization that his views resembled those of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who believed that "only the collapse of modern technological civilization can avert disaster." Kingsnorth rejects terroristic violence, advocating instead for individual withdrawal from the system: "Withdraw because action is not always more effective than inaction," he urges. But he recognizes that even nonviolent varieties of Anthropocene antihumanism involve an adverse judgment on the human species. Antihumanists reject any claim humanity might once have had to admiration and solidarity. Instead, they invest their admiration in the nonhuman: animals, plants, rocks, water, air. Any of these entities is superior to humanity, for the simple reason that it doesn't destroy all the others. (p. 31)
Antihumanists do not believe that human self-reflection adds anything to the universe. We can reflect on the beauty of a sunset; ticks can find new hosts during a sunset. What is the difference? And who are we to privilege our thinking as opposed to, say, our digestion. Antihumanists have their version of the Christian Fall, which involves a separation from Nature because of their self-consciousness:
This is true first of all in a physical sense. While we tend to think of ourselves as independent, self-contained beings, we are actually quite permeable. "I am surrounded and penetrated by entities such as stomach bacteria, parasites, mitochondria," Morton writes. Our anxiety about this symbiosis between humans and nonhumans, our insistence on standing alone and apart, is responsible for what Morton dramatically refers to as "the Severing," the millennia-long process of estrangement from the natural world that has finally brought us to the disaster of the Anthropocene. "Extinction is the logical conclusion of alienation," he concludes. (p. 38.)
Perhaps, trash should get a vote. Kirsch writes about Political theorist Jane Bennet's reflections on the vibrancy of a random pile of trash. In Bennett's insight the debris became "vivid entities not entirely reducible to the contexts in which (human) subjects set them." (p. 39.)
From there it is another short step to argue that it would have been better for people to never have existed. According to David Benatar, "all human lives contain much more bad than is ordinarily recognized. Benatar concludes "Humans have the unfortunate distinction of being the most destructive and harmful species on earth. The amount of suffering in the world could be radically reduced if there were no more humans."
And what would the universe lose if the human experiment in self-reflection disappeared?[1] Not much according to Benatar:
"What is so special about a world that contains moral agents and rational deliberators?" Benatar jeers. "That humans value a world that contains beings such as themselves says more about their inappropriate sense of self-importance than it does about the world." (p. 45.)
Ok….maybe, but you first.
This perspective seems nuts, but the last twenty years have shown us how quickly things can move from "nutty discussions among academics" to "use my invented pronoun or lose your job." Kirsch points out that society is facing a demographic decline. How much of that is due to a generalized loss of moral confidence by human beings who may believe that life is not worth living? Kirsch concludes the section on AA with a summary of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for fiction winning "The Overstory" by Richard Powers which has the theme that trees are morally superior to human beings. The Powers' story concludes with a scientist drinking poison distilled from a tree while uttering the last words "Dying is life, too."
As literature, this is toxically death-affirming.
If you think this stuff is not already here, it is.[2]
Kirsch explains the Transhumanist skein as follows:
Transhumanism, by contrast, glorifies some of the very things that antihumanism decries - scientific and technological progress, the supremacy of reason. But it believes that the only way forward for humanity is to create new forms of intelligent life that will no longer be Homo sapiens. Some transhumanists believe that genetic engineering and nanotechnology will allow us to alter our brains and bodies so profoundly that we will escape human limitations like mortality and embodiment. Others look forward, with hope or trepidation, to the invention of artificial intelligences infinitely superior to our own. These beings will demote humanity to the rank we assign to animals - unless they decide that their goals are better served by wiping us out completely.(p.12.)
If the AA component of the revolt against humanity is all about original sin and perdition, the Transhumanist ("TH") is all about the Eschaton and the Second Coming. In the TH scheme, this involves turning the universe into a computer.
In The Singularity Is Near, Kurzweil describes himself as a "patternist," that is, "someone who views patterns of information as the fundamental reality." Examples of information patterns include DNA, semiconductor chips, and the letters on this page, all of which configure molecules so that they become meaningful instead of random. By turning matter into information, we redeem it from entropy and nullity. Ultimately, "even the 'dumb' matter and mechanisms of the universe will be transformed into exquisitely sublime forms of intelligence," Kurzweil prophesies. (pp. 67–68).
In this case, humanity is not the devil but is the god who will "redeem" the universe.
Prior to that is the dream of immortality. Kirsch offers this observation:
But transhumanists believe that we will take the first steps toward disembodiment sooner than most people realize. In fact, while engineering challenges remain, we have already made the key conceptual breakthroughs. First, we know that the human mind has a completely material basis. There is no intangible soul or spirit that occupies our bodies; the experience of being an "I" is produced by chemical-electrical processes in the brain. This thoroughgoing materialism is still resisted by most religious believers, but science has known it for a long time. (pp. 68–69). [3]
Kirsch concludes with a chapter on "Spiritual Warfare." It seems obvious that what motivates each side is not technical, but theological. Both TH and AA are specific kinds of Christian heresies. I began by noting that I read this on my trip to India. While in India, I had a short discussion about the Hindu idea of "god." I was told by my Hindu interlocutor that for Hindus, god is not self-aware or sentient. This view completely overturns the Western perspective for whom God is thought thinking itself. Self-awareness is a divine property. It must be because we find self-awareness in human beings, and if it exists in the creation, it must exist in the Creator.
I imagine that Hindus would say that self-awareness is not a divine quality. It is an error on the part of human beings who must get past the illusion of sentience to the awareness that all are one in Brahma.
Perhaps, AA would map nicely onto Hinduism, but I saw nothing in India that suggested that anyone would give someone preaching voluntary extinction the time of day. Individuals in the Hindu tradition may choose to non-violently end their lives, but only when they have achieved enlightenment. For the average Hindu, there are "yogas" and "dharmas" that yoke one to this life. The idea of abandoning one's duty to one's family in order to commit collective suicide would be antithetical to the core teaching of Hinduism. I suspect that they would find the idea of mass suicide to be a distasteful first-world solution to a first-world fetish.[4]
But for some Christians, the idea of original sin and the damnation of the unsaved still lurks in the culture like primitive code. Alternatively, the idea that some will be raised to a resurrection body in a New Jerusalem may be a badly remembered bit of childhood Sunday school. Because these bits of imagery are unhooked from the rest of Christian thought, they can do a lot of damage. Thus, Christianity preaches immanence and transcendence. We are saved in the here and now; God exists in the here and now. Yet, God and our salvation transcend this material plane.
Most importantly, we are not God. We don't decide whether humanity shall go extinct or that it will renounce its ability to self-reflect for the sake of greater efficiency. 
Kirsch makes some good points about how the ideas of AA have a natural constituency among globalists and those who want their utopia in the here and now. Populists, nationalists, and conservatives will oppose both TH and AA.
How serious is this stuff? I'd like to say that it is pure nonsense, but the ideas - particularly the extreme ideas - push the Overton Window way open. If you don't know how wide that window is, you are never going to appreciate the debate.
Footnotes:
[1] I recently reviewed the science fiction novel "Blindsight" by Peter Watts, which argues that self-consciousness may be an evolutionary dead-end. Blindsight argues that humanity may well lose to very efficient Turing-test passing automata which neatly outthinks us by raw processing power while we are engaging in introspection and deciding which course best reflects who we are. https://medium.com/@peterseanEsq/our-...
[2] See also "Blindsight," supra.

[Eli Sugerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This fascinating, philosophically dense book contrasts transhumanism with Anthropocene antihumanism (ideologies that differ in the nature of their post-human ideals but agree that, in McKibben's words, the human game has begun to play itself out). Among the most thought-provoking I've read, this book challenges the reader to imagine a world without humanity (and more controversially, to welcome such extinction as a windfall for the world and its non-human inhabitants).

[Puja Killa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant and thought provoking. An argument for ‘revolt against humanity’ through antihumanism and/or transhumanism, both of which need sacrifice of human in its present form.

[InspireSeattle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reports of stunning advancements in Artificial Intelligence are currently widespread, and with them, debate ensues on the pros and cons of these new technological advancements. These reports inspired me to read The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us, by Adam Kirsch. In his book, Kirsch quotes writings of dozens of respected “thinkers” (engineers, philosophers, political activists, scientists, etc.) regarding the future of humanity, and divides them into two distinct camps. His first group believe in Anthropocene antihumanism, and are “inspired by revulsion at humanity’s destruction of the natural environment.” Kirsch’s second group are members of transhumanism, a philosophical and scientific movement that advocates the use of current and emerging technologies—such as genetic engineering, cryonics, artificial intelligence (AI), and nanotechnology—to augment human capabilities and improve the human condition. Both groups are predicting the end of humanity as we know it, but have very different conclusions about what this means.

The Anthropocene is a term describing our current geological age as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Its premise is that nature exists only for humans, not in its own right. Members of Anthropocene antihumanism believe that “humanity is essentially a destroyer, and has been from the very beginning of its appearance on the planet.” Antihumanists believe that we’ve shattered the planet beyond repair, and that it’s too late to turn things around. The only question is how soon this human-caused apocalypse will come. Antihumanists believe “that the end of humanity’s reign on Earth is imminent, and that we should welcome it…as a sentence we have justly passed on ourselves.”

Examples of our precarious situation obviously includes climate change, which Kirsch calls “a second, deadlier Holocaust,” and will result in rising sea levels, a refugee crisis, wars as hundreds of millions of people flee equatorial zones and crop failures, and mass death from heat exposure. Kirsch writes that “we are in the beginning of a mass extinction,” the sixth great extinction in the history of planet earth. Kirsch calls nuclear war “the ultimate evil,” but writes that our destroying the earth as we pursue aims that we consider to be good and just, such as our pursing prosperity, comfort, and human population growth, as actually more “radically unsettling.” Kirsch writes that humans have been in “a zero-sum competition that pits the gratification of human desires against the well-being of all nature.” Survival of the fittest has been replaced by survival “of what is most useful to human beings.” Human fingerprints are now on everything on earth.

Antihumanists are discussing a “revolt against humanity,” which Kirsch claims is a real and significant phenomenon, even if just an idea. Kirsch points to recent polls that show over 90 percent of respondents believing that our future will be worse than the present, which Kirsch see as evidence that Anthropocene antihumanism is already more than an “avant-garde phenomenon.” But given what Antihumanists are calling for, including the cessation of all human reproduction, I find it hard to imagine that this movement will ever be viewed as anything other than extremism at its most extreme.

On the other side of this debate are Transhumanists, who also believe “that human life can’t continue the way it is now,” and that “our world is on the brink of a fundamental transformation.” But their view of the needed transformation involves using technology to create new intelligent life that will no longer be human. They are excited about creating AI with intelligence infinitely superior to our own. Transhumanists believe that technology can “transform human bodies and minds,” and create “posthuman successors” that can survive and prosper on a degraded planet. They insist that technology will allow humans to overcome “aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth.” “We will be able to redesign our bodies to make them more efficient or simply more aesthetically appealing.” Human senses will be refined, and human “brains will be supercharged, so that the average person will think more rapidly and deeply than Einstein.” We will be able to engage in “mind-uploading” and “interstellar exploration.” Humans can develop a “brain-emulating computer,” which will effectively be a human mind. This technology will enable humans to live in a “fully virtual consciousness.” With these enhancements, humans will become immortal, eradicating death from old age. The technologies that will allow all this to happen include genetic modification, nanotechnology, and robotics.

Transhumanists believe that in a relatively short time the entire human brain can be scanned into a computer, and a computer can be programmed into consciousness. The holy grail for transhumanists is artificial general intelligence, which includes “a computer mind that can learn about any subject.” This computer can improve itself without limit, “until it became more capable than all human beings put together.” But Kirsch admits that transhumanism tends to overpromise, and that “big breakthroughs always seem to lie just over the horizon.”

Kirsch also describes many dangers that exist pursuing this technology. What comes with creating artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a computer program that is independently conscious, I.E., a computer that may conclude that there is no purpose for humans to exist. It may become impossible for humans to ensure that AGIs problem-solving abilities will address the problems that we direct it to solve. AGI might come up with its own ideas, and might determine that the best way to achieve its goals is to exterminate humans. In my humble view, that could suck. Some scientists believe that this could happen before humans even realize it’s happening! Yikes!

In a nutshell, the revolt against humanity, including both Anthropocene antihumanism and transhumanism, believe that we need to “forfeit our own existence as a species” to save the earth. I humbly suggest that these ideas will struggle to be accepted by mainstream society, but Kirsch believes that both philosophies can be important even if they don’t come to pass, and could inspire a needed revolution. On this, Kirsch may be right. Given humanity’s refusal to take significant action to stop climate change, as well as the scary-fast improvements in AI, it’s not hard to imagine a revolution or two just around the corner.

[Randy Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been exploring the idea that the most important part of human life is life not human. I got interested in the post humanities series which aren’t referenced here but should be. The title is pretty self-explanatory. The only furthering of this idea is whether the camp being discussed thinks humanity should work to terminate its existence aggressively or whether humanity should look to transcend itself preferably through digitizing its intelligence or via some similar notion of technological transformation.

I’m not sure either make sense. Personally, the work it takes to diminish my own human-centric thinking is extreme. Though if I focus on other forms of life everyday I’m able to lessen my focus on myself and my kind in an incremental fashion over time. While much more needs to happen for human beings to stop putting themselves ahead of the rest of planet, it will take a shift in how individual human beings think about life to make it happen.

[Melissa Grigsby · Rating 5 out of 5]

We’re fucked and we deserve it ✌🏻

[Eyffem⁷ · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting and thought provoking read. felt the conversation going in circles which made me lose interest sometimes but talking about the imminent doom of humanity is not really the easiest topic.

[Antonio Gallo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adam Kirsch, poeta e critico letterario americano noto per le sue collaborazioni con The New Republic, ci consegna con "The Revolt Against Humanity" (Columbia Global Reports, 2023) un saggio breve ma incisivo di appena 104 pagine che affronta una questione tanto inquietante quanto attuale: l'emergere di correnti di pensiero che non solo prevedono, ma addirittura auspicano la fine del regno dell'umanità sulla Terra.

Kirsch identifica con acume analitico due movimenti apparentemente antitetici ma sostanzialmente affini nella loro visione post-umana del futuro. Da un lato gli "antiumanisti dell'Antropocene", figure come il poeta Robinson Jeffers e il filosofo Timothy Morton, che celebrano l'imminente estinzione dell'umanità come una liberazione per la natura devastata dal nostro impatto distruttivo. Dall'altro i "transumanisti", profeti di un futuro in cui l'Homo sapiens sarà trasceso da forme di intelligenza artificiale generale o da cyborg dalle capacità cognitive superiori.

L'intuizione fondamentale di Kirsch è che questi due approcci, pur nelle loro evidenti differenze, condividono un ripudio comune dell'umanesimo tradizionale e costituiscono insieme quello che egli definisce uno "sviluppo spirituale di primo ordine", paragonabile per portata storica al cristianesimo o al comunismo.

Il merito principale dell'opera non risiede tanto nella mera esposizione delle teorie degli "anti-" e "trans-" umanisti, quanto nella capacità dell'autore di coglierne i nessi profondi e di situarle in una prospettiva storica e filosofica più ampia. Kirsch dimostra come entrambi i movimenti convergano nel rifiutare l'idea che gli esseri umani siano l'unica fonte di significato e valore nell'universo, aprendo così la strada a una radicale ridefinizione della "biopolitica" foucaultiana.

L'approccio di Kirsch si distingue per la sua equilibrata imparzialità analitica. Non cade nella tentazione di liquidare questi movimenti come mere fantasie intellettuali, né li abbraccia acriticamente. Piuttosto, li riconosce come "genuina estrapolazione da sviluppi innegabilmente reali", pur evidenziandone la tendenza all'"iperprometteità" delle previsioni.

Particolarmente acuta è la sua critica agli oppositori conservatori che si limitano ad appellarsi alla "saggezza della ripugnanza" senza offrire argomentazioni razionali. Come osserva giustamente, simili reazioni emotive furono utilizzate in passato per proscrivere l'omosessualità o i matrimoni interrazziali.

Tuttavia, l'analisi presenta alcune lacune. Kirsch tende forse a enfatizzare eccessivamente le affinità tra antiumanisti e transumanisti, trascurando differenze sostanziali. Ad esempio, mentre i primi adottano una genuina misantropia filosofica, i secondi tendono piuttosto a considerare l'umanità "immatura" in senso kantiano, bisognosa di superamento evolutivo piuttosto che di estinzione punitiva.

Inoltre, l'autore accetta troppo acriticamente l'identificazione transumanista tra mente e sistema di elaborazione dell'informazione, ignorando il carattere fondamentalmente incarnato e "nel-mondo" della nostra esistenza cognitiva ed emotiva.

Il vero pregio del saggio risiede nel riconoscere che la "rivolta contro l'umanità" rappresenta un fenomeno culturale di portata epocale, indipendentemente dalla realizzabilità delle sue profezie. Come il "pensiero abissale" nietzschiano dell'eterno ritorno, l'idea dell'imminente fine dell'umanità funziona come una sfida intellettuale che ci costringe a riflettere sul valore, il significato e il destino della nostra specie.

In un'epoca di crisi ecologica e di rapida accelerazione tecnologica, Kirsch ci offre una chiave di lettura indispensabile per comprendere alcune delle correnti più radicali del pensiero contemporaneo. La sua prosa, sempre lucida ed elegante, rende accessibili tematiche complesse senza mai cadere nella banalizzazione.

"The Revolt Against Humanity" si configura come un contributo prezioso al dibattito contemporaneo sui destini dell'umanità. Benché breve, il saggio possiede quella densità concettuale e quella capacità di sintesi che contraddistinguono i grandi saggi interpretativi. Kirsch non pretende di offrire risposte definitive, ma riesce magistralmente nell'intento di mappare un territorio intellettuale ancora largamente inesplorato, fornendo strumenti critici indispensabili per orientarsi in uno dei dibattiti più inquietanti e affascinanti del nostro tempo.

Un'opera che merita di essere letta non solo dagli specialisti, ma da chiunque voglia comprendere le sfide filosofiche e spirituali che l'umanità del XXI secolo si trova ad affrontare.

[Kuang Ting · Rating 5 out of 5]

這本《The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us》是Columbia Global Report 2023年出版的一本書，如果你喜歡報導文學推薦去買來看，每一本都很精緻，又能啟發讀者新穎的觀點。本書討論近幾年越來越流行的兩股思潮，如果你跟我一樣很愛這種不同觀點的思辨，這是一本很貼近2020年代氛圍的作品。

書名的意思就是反人類或反人性革命，想像一個沒有我們人類的未來。隨著地球進入人類世，人類���地球上留下了各種前所未見的傷疤。我們都知道人類為了追求文明的繁榮與進步，大肆破壞自然，導致全球暖化等氣候危機，十幾年前還在正負2度C，但科學家的呼籲像臨死之人的囈語，小聲到根本沒人聽見，或者根本沒人在乎，人類不斷”跨欄”成功，跨過挽救地球的最後底線，如今大夥好像已經放棄垂死掙扎，對各種末日倒數習以為常了，今年夏天早上8:00以後也已經熱到無法在戶外活動了。

人類像寄生蟲一般不斷滋生並蠶食地球。企業為了追求利潤無所不用其極，創建了一個益發不平等的資本社會，更不用說人類天生的各種弊病，為了權力與財富，不惜發動戰爭，新一輪的冷戰已經開打，核子和科技戰爭進入新一輪軍備競賽，不同部落之間沒完沒了的意識形態鬥爭，甚至連最基本人跟人的信任都漸漸被社群媒體瓦解。這種人類的缺陷清單可以���斷列下去，相信大家都有所感受。因為人類文明充滿太多無法解釋的荒唐，所以有兩股勢力就此崛起，分別是antihumanism(反人文主義)和transhumanism(超人類主義)，本書就是在介紹這兩股思潮的內涵。

人類以智慧理性自居，自詡為萬物之靈，自文藝復興啟蒙了人文主義，以人文本是過去數百年人類的主要思維。但假如人類真的那麼優秀，為什麼會不斷重蹈覆轍，無法汲取歷史的教訓，好像一步一步自我毀滅中? 物極必反，有一群人對人文主義竟然產生厭惡之情，他們成為反人類者，希望人類這個物種可以盡快從地球上消失。人類文明製造了太多苦難，不論是加諸於大自然，還是做盡傻事自嘗苦果。綜觀地球五十億年的歷史，所有生命體最後都會消亡，人類最終可能只是另一個微不足道的過客。反人類主義者相信人類是消極的存在，他們期待文明毀滅的那天到來，他們相信唯有當人類從地球上消失，大地之母才有機會重新賦予地球新生。反人類者厭倦了人類的自私自利，他們討厭資本主義奉行的人定勝天，他們的觀點有一點虛無主義，甚至提倡末世論，敞開雙手歡迎世界末日的到來。


反人類主義的對立面就是超人類主義，這種思維是很多矽谷科技公司創辦人的信仰，可能就是這個原因本書才會被歸類在宗教底下。科技公司在21世紀早期網路普及之初是一種很新潮的職涯選項，因為跟華爾街的金錢遊戲不同，科技似乎能打造一個更美好的世界。儘管到了2024年，大眾對矽谷的印象已經改變，普遍的認知是科技公司只是華爾街的另一種翻版，依然以追求利潤為主要目標。

但我們先撇除這些陳見，科技確實有帶給人類正面的影響。網路雖然放大偏見和仇恨言論，但它確實也建立了很多社群連結。它讓我們可以跟久未聯繫的朋友重新搭上線，溝通的成本也近乎為零。如果你是正常人，不喜歡讀這種哲理思辯的書，去看商業作品的話，他們也會贊同電子商務讓店家可以觸及更多消費者，又或者以媒體傳播的視角，網路讓你的觀點可以無遠弗屆，跟世界各地的讀者交流，打破資訊的藩籬。這些都是科技的好處。

另外以這兩年最夯的AI為例，AI也可以推進藥物研發的效率，或者如比爾蓋茲推薦的《Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing)》，書名還刻意玩反烏托邦的梗，AI可以讓”因材施教”成為可能。若把時間軸拉長，人類文明史基本上就是科技進步所推動，它讓我們壽命延長，使大多數的人遠離貧窮，甚至享受豐饒的物質及精神生活。

很多矽谷的創業家就是相信科技可以推動社會進步，所以義無反顧地投身其中，但當然利潤也是一個誘人的因素啦。他們之中有些人對科技的信仰已經達到宗教的程度，有時會被稱為「超人類主義」，他們認為科技的進步最終會讓人類進化到下一個更高級的階段，我們現在是智人Homo Sapiens，但進化的仍不夠完全，否則就不會做出那麼多愚蠢的事了。超人類主義者相信透過科技的輔助和推進，人類文明可以提升至全新的境界。

這包含非常多的方法，例如讓人類變成生化人，就像馬斯克Neuralink正在打造腦機介面，他們正在嘗試在大腦中植入晶片，讓人類的意識數位化。假如成功了，我們人類就能擺脫肉體的限制，成為永生人，我們的意識也能跟日漸成熟的AI相輔相成，甚至互相融合，像電影《露西》那樣徹底激活我們大腦的潛力，理論上這將使人類文明爆炸性突破。

最知名的超人類主義者就是大名鼎鼎的Ray Kurzweil，他在三十幾年前就已經在預言有靈魂的機器即將誕生，今年也出了一本續作《The Singularity Is Nearer》，等中文版出來再買來看。他也創辦了奇點大學這座跳脫傳統的學術機構。他有打過一個比喻很傳神，他說其實我們已經是生化人了，因為手機已經讓個體的思維無限擴大，手機只是拿在手上，但本質上其實跟植入腦中的晶片沒有差別。過去幾天也有幾個科技的焦點，包括ChatGPT o1模型在某些領域已經達到博士水平，蘋果iPhone 16也主打AI的功能，Google的NotebookLM也能模仿兩個人類在對話。科技突破的新聞多到已經讓人麻痺，我們也離Tranhumanist的世界越來越近了。

《The Revolt Against Humanity》就是在介紹這兩股越來越融入主流的思潮，而且出乎意料的是，它們之間雖然看似對立，但其實也有很多相似的地方。他們都希望人類”消失”，一種是凋零，一種是躍升，兩種思維的碰撞，都在思索人性的本質，也影響諸如環保運動、公共政策等領域。

本書篇幅精簡，但引用了很多的文學和電影作品，作者Adam Kirsch是美國一位公共知識份子/詩人/文學評論家，作品刊登於主流期刊，他目前是《華爾街日報》的編輯，也有在哥大教書，Columbia Global Report其中一本《The Global Novel: Writing the World in the 21st Century》也是他的作品。他老爸是一位聖經學者和猶太人，所以他從小對猶太教、猶太文化有很深的認識，他還有寫一本《The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature》，加薩戰爭依然持續，希望這場種族屠殺趕快落幕><。世人往往提起猶太人都會想起財富，如果有機會也滿想認識一下何謂猶太文學。

[Heath · Rating 3 out of 5]

I rarely encounter antihumanism or transhumanism in the circles I run in, so it was with a macabre sense of fascination that I read this work.

On the positive side, those who adhere to this philosophy recognize that human beings have done a poor job of caring for the planet that we live on. It can feel that we have done more damage than good. As a Christian, my worldview teaches that humans were created to care for creation and help it to flourish. The evidence of our failure is all around us.

On the negative side, these philosophies are defeatist and untenable. Simply put, the antihumanist approach is incoherent. Advocates of this view go so far as to promote suicide and the eradication of humanity. Yet they do not even buy into their own view, as evidenced by the fact that they have not yet committed suicide. I do not hope that they will, do not get that impression! Rather, it seems to me that they see the value in life and hold to it in spite of their beliefs. Since their viewpoint offers no hope, I wonder where they come by it. They do not seem to come by it honestly.

On this theme, it occured to me how hopeless both of these viewpoints are. The solutions they advocate only point toward despair. The idea that humans should not have children, or should limit the amount of children they are having, exemplifies this. Children are our hope! Not only are they the future of our species, they give us tangible reasons to make this world better! We are not powerless in the face of all the destruction we have wrought. We may not be able to undo it, but we can work to improve things. It is in this struggle that we can find purpose and maybe even some hope!

Books I have read that are in conversation with this one: Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community: Eight EssaysSex, Economy, Freedom, and Community: Eight Essays, The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry

[James Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not going to lie, Kirsch's overview and occasional extensions of and reflections on antihumanism and transhumanism are, quite often, depressing as fuck. But his book does everything it sets out to do in a calm, thoughtful, and graceful style. The book itself--the tidy, brief, classy style of it--drew my attention from it's place on the shelf of a local bookshop. And the first line of it, a quotation from Foucault, drew me in. I was intrigued by the Kirsch's bio, on the back cover, which identifies him first as a poet. Indeed, his measured attention to language itself, as much as the subject matter, is what makes this a book worth reading.

If you've been paying attention to any of the various writers, philosophers, and podcasters (and various combinations of the same) who contemplate the future of AI, as I have, some of these thinkers and their sentiments will already be familiar. If you're entirely new to such concerns as the "alignment problem," Kirsch glosses such things well and with admirable economy. This isn't to say that the book is about It's but one topic among several relevant to the subjects under view. For me, it was the contemporary antihumanist philosophers who were new, though their antecedents--Nietzsche and Foucault--were not. So, becoming a bit familiar with them was enlightening.

Even more admirable is how Kirsch brings these two seemingly divergent strains of thought together, while also bringing in traditional humanism as a contrast. The early, depressing, chapters are worth getting through for the nuanced way that he brings the various strands together in the final pages. There are no fireworks. There is no big proclamation about what the future holds. What we get instead--and, in many ways, this is quite a treat--is a nuanced reflection.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting analysis and comparison of two different trends that "imagine a future without us": antihumanists who want the human population to drastically shrink or disappear, and transhumanists who want to use technology to go beyond our bodily limits.

In the conclusion, Kirsch writes that like more traditional critiques of modern life, antihumanists and transhumanists call for sacrifice:

The revolt against humanity has a great future ahead of it because it makes a similar appeal to people who are committed to science and reason, yet yearn for the clarity and purpose of an absolute moral imperative. It says that we can move the planet, maybe even the universe, in the direction of the good, on one condition--that we forfeit our own existence as a species. (90)

Kirsch finds himself ambivalent because his commitment to humanism in the classic sense means that he finds traditional and religious ideas about humanity to be restrictive, and yet a world without humans will be the end of the humanities.

[Philemon - · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is humanity going to be around 100 years from now? How about 50? How should we take the question? One group of radical thinkers called anti-humanists thinks we should celebrate the now-thinkable idea of human extinction. The Anthropocene has been a disaster for Earth's ecosphere, they say. The world would be a lot better off without us. Let's give other life forms a chance to come back and thrive. Let's get out of their way.

Another group of radicals, the transhumanists, doesn't mind the prospect of human extinction. They count on technology to save the day by turning people into cyborgs, then ultimately AI-directed robots robust enough to survive a radically degraded environment on Earth and ultimately able to redesign themselves into space probes to seek new home worlds.

Kirsch's book is mostly a survey of recent books by and on the two camps. It's a quick high-level read, an entertaining way to view humanity's worst case from two unusual angles. If you want to go there.

[Ben Stiefel · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read, with some postulations that make sense. However, I got most of the way through the book (to the last 10 pages or so) without knowing exactly what the point was that Kirsch was trying to make. A lot of the examples seemed not to support any argument one way or the other, they were just "here are some things to think about, enjoy!" which, while great as a starting point, I was left wondering what he was actually espousing. Should we resign ourselves to the end of humanity? Rush towards it? Do nothing because we can't affect it either way?
Similarly, his perspectives on liberalism and conservatism were both very wobbly as well. At different times he defines both as the causes for climate change and us heading towards disaster and both as the sides trying to avoid that fate.

In all it was pretty muddy, outside of the premise that there are 2 non-human futures ahead of us, which are both possible, or... maybe not.

[Taco Hidde Bakker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent long essay about the current state of antihumanist and transhumanist philosophies in the face of climate breakdown and developments in AI and AGI (Artificial General Intelligence a.k.a. 'the Singularity'). It basically comes down to the following conundrum: is humanity unique for its virtually limitless technological inventiveness to overcome biological limits or are human limited beings to begin with and should we accept our limits and live within earthly boundaries, rather than striving for creating our own superhuman successors or uploading our brains to photons traveling to the farthest depths of the universe?
The extremist ideas from both sides that Kirsch succinctly lays out, stimulate moral, political spiritual and religious considerations about the status of humanity on earth and beyond. Even if many antihumanist and transhumanist prophesies may never come true, as powerful stories and ideas they will have the capacity to reshape our world.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does reason “fall silent when it most needs to be heard”? Does every life, sooner or later, “run into the red”? Is the only way off the precipice to fall? What is the best thing that we current humans can do for the future humans? If your response is, “to never create them in the first place,” check out The Revolt Against Humanity: Imaging a Future Without Us by poet and literary critic Adam Kirsch. Whether you’re curious about ahumanism, transhumanism, or posthumanism–or merely concerned about the state of the planet–Kirsch’s slim but fruitful introduction to these topics provides plenty of food for thought for all of us who are “born to trouble as the sparks fly upward,” blithely “sleepwalking down the dark mountain of the Anthropocene to an even more comprehensive doom” if we don’t change course dramatically and soon. Open the book with an open mind to consider the positions that “dying is life, too” and that we can “give life meaning by giving it up.”

[Victor Njeru · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was something that I found to come at a very interesting time. I have a decent amount of people in my life required recently acquired. I would say are anti-natalist, but more importantly considerate of our role on this planet. Quotes like this from the book encapsulate these thoughts for me.

“cattle biomass alone exceeds that of all other living vertebrate animals combined—including humans,”

I wouldn’t necessarily agree with everything that is
argued in this work however I do believe that perpetuating human life just for the sake of it is not necessarily some absolute good. I think it’s an ideology that is very insidious. It’s been taught to us
like something that is just obvious, but it’s worth examining why we feel this way?.

one last quote

“There is no more reason for us to be here than there is for animals or plants, stones or stars.”