Stray Thoughts: The ‘Extinction-Drive’

There are minor spoilers for HBO`s True Detective (season 1) in this article

What is it about human beings that makes us occasionally yearn for the end? Not in the sense of the individual who considers suicide – that is a whole other kettle of fish that I don’t want to get into here. What I’m referring to is that part of human nature which actively wishes for the Final Moment of Man; a great finale where all the deeds of the past are collated, the sinful are separated from the righteous, and the peoples of the Earth are judged. This might resemble something like an ‘end of history’ moment: the culmination of an abstract historical process in the establishment of a Utopia. Equally, it could be more like the Christian Second Coming; whereby human rule is superseded by the direct governance of a divine power. Whether secular or religious, these ideas seem to flow from the same basic impulse: the see the life we are living now – and the world which plays host to it – ultimately replaced by a more perfect alternative.

The defining characteristic of this drive rests in man’s yearning to witness his own end. To see the vagaries and sufferings of mortal life finally wiped clean – and with it all the burdensome responsibility that accompanies human freedom – to be replaced by something more permanent, fixed, and complete. Through the jettisoning of a painful present, it is hoped that a more perfect future will emerge. This has been the dearest wish of many throughout human history, and it has taken on many different guises. Indeed, the history of the 20th century showed the destructive power of such ideologies in full force, illustrated by the unholy triad of Soviet Communism, Nazism and Maoism. However, the subject of this article is not Utopianism or Millenarianism, but rather an often overlooked and misunderstood variant of this impulse.

In this far darker form of world-denial, the central goal of putting an end to suffering does not result in attempts to ameliorate or solve the problems of the world, but rather to end to the world itself finally and totally. By perceiving human life as being beyond all hopes of salvation, such a mentality views the structure of Being itself to be so warped, so inherently wrong, that the only solution is to obliterate its very existence. Under this rubric extinction thus becomes an ‘end-in-itself’; something to be pursued absolutely for its own sake, as the only justifiable response to an unbearable situation. This might thus be labelled the ‘extinction-drive’ – that part of human nature which experiences an irrepressible itch for oblivion.

In HBO’s excellent series True Detective, Matthew McConaughey’s intelligent, caustic and spiritually emaciated detective Rust Cohle lays bears this attitude “Maybe the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal”. For Rust, the pain of existing in the wake of his child’s untimely death has set him on the path of life-negation and nihilism. His passive dismissal of the human race as a whole (and of course the world it has built for itself here in this “giant gutter in outer space”) never translates into wanton destruction, however. Whether mitigated by his philosophy, compensatory beliefs, or the moralizing influence of his partner and profession, Cohle never seeks to bring about this ‘midnight’ himself. Rest assured though – other preachers of the Rightful End of Man have had no such qualms.

When the unrepentant serial-killer Carl Panzram came to write his autobiography, he announced that “I don’t believe in man, God nor Devil. I hate the whole damned human race including myself”. His total hatred and unrelenting rage led him to commit countless acts of mayhem and murder throughout his life. For both Cohle and Panzram the End of Man was the only viable solution to the catastrophe of life itself, yet what the former preached with passive resignation, the latter actively tried to enact by his own hands. We must count ourselves unlucky that the former was merely fictional, whereas the latter was very real. Make no mistake: the only thing preventing Panzram from achieving the End that he sought was his own physical limitations. If he had been given power over a nation, he would have shattered it and many others besides. If over the whole world, he would have taken a shot at life itself; the modern weapons at his fingertips being more than sufficient to pursue this aim. And if made God, Panzram would have made sure that reality itself would cease to exist.

Invidia Fati – the hatred of fate, the world, and life itself – this is the mentality at the heart of the extinction-drive. Almost every human being has at some point felt the stirrings of life-negation and bitterness within them. Usually such feelings are short-lived, or are quickly offset by more positive, life-affirming emotions. Sometimes, however, in a crucible of tremendous pain and in the absence of any fellowship or love, a person emerges who embodies the extinction-drive in its most radical and unencumbered form. The existence of such all-too-human monsters, these latter-day Panzrams, offers a vital warning to us all. Do not fall to the merciless simplicity of nihilism. Do not allow your pain and fear to transform into genocidal rage.

After all, this world of ours is all that there is; and the life we are leading now may be the best deal we will get. Just as a life lived as if it were a curse quickly negates its own value (it is ‘self-negating‘), a life lived with meaning and love is remarkably self-justifying. Life is what we make of it, in other words. To learn to live with the absurdities, vagaries, and suffering of life – and to find in that swamp all the meaning, purpose, joy, and love needed to sustain you – that is how to succeed at being human. This is Amor Fati – the love of fate – and it far outstrips both the compensatory illusions of utopianism and the diabolical ambitions of the extinction-drive as a means to achieve our salvation.