+ AT: Resource Scarcity
Constant innovation ensures resources are infinite
Geddes 4 – Writer and Libertarian Analyst (Marc, “The monster non-socialist FAQ”, 2/12,
http://rebirthofreason.com/War/MonsterFAQ.shtml)
A significant disruption to supplies of critical resources can cause temporary problems, but in a free market, if
resources start to become scarce, prices rise, leading to a search of substitutes and improved conservation
efforts. The pool of resources is not fixed, because human ingenuity can find substitutes or new sources of
resources. Supplies of most raw materials have been increasing throughout the 20th century, and the cost has
been falling (See the entry on Natural resources). For instance, between 1950 and 1970, bauxite (aluminium
source) reserves increased by 279 per cent, copper by 179 per cent, chromite (chromium source) by 675 per
cent, and tin reserves by 10 per cent. In 1973 experts predicted oil reserves stood at around 700 billion barrels,
yet by 1988 total oil reserves had actually increased to 900 billion barrels. Production of certain kinds of
resources such as fossil fuels may finally be beginning to peak but there are renewable energy sources in
development which can serve as substitutes. Simplistic thermodynamic analysis of energy production is
misleading, because it's not the quantities of energy used or produced that determine economic value, but the
utility, or usefulness if that energy to humans. If energy is being used more efficiently you don't need as much
of it, and some forms of energy are more valuable than others- for instance kinetic energy in the form of wind
power is less valuable than the same quantity of latent energy in the form of oil. Solar power is a virtually
inexhaustible supply of new energy for stationary sources and the hydrogen fuel cell can serve for transportation
in place of fossil fuels. Developing these technologies costs money, so to avoid resource shortages a good
economy is essential. Libertarian capitalism is the system which generates wealth the fastest.
Friendly A.I. coming online now and will make civilization infinitely sustainable – rejecting science such
as environmental management kills the transition and makes planetary extinction inevitable
Eliezer Yudkowsky, Singularity Institute, 2006. “Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in
Global Risk,” http://www.singinst.org/research/publications
It once occurred to me that modern
civilization occupies an unstable state. I.J. Good's hypothesized intelligence explosion
describes a dynamically unstable system, like a pen precariously balanced on its tip. If the pen is exactly vertical, it may remain
upright; but if the pen tilts even a little from the vertical, gravity pulls it farther in that direction, and the process
accelerates. So too would smarter systems have an easier time making themselves smarter. A dead planet,
lifelessly orbiting its star, is also stable. Unlike an intelligence explosion, extinction is not a dynamic attractor - there is a large
gap between almost extinct, and extinct. Even so, total extinction is stable. Must not our civilization eventually
wander into one mode or the other? As logic, the above argument contains holes. Giant Cheesecake Fallacy, for example:
minds do not blindly wander into attractors, they have motives. Even so, I suspect that, pragmatically speaking, our alternatives
boil down to becoming smarter or becoming extinct. Nature is, not cruel, but indifferent; a neutrality which often seems
indistinguishable from outright hostility. Reality throws at you one challenge after another, and when you run into a challenge you
can't handle, you suffer the consequences. Often Nature poses requirements that are grossly unfair, even on tests where the penalty for
failure is death. How is a 10th-century medieval peasant supposed to invent a cure for tuberculosis? Nature does not match her
challenges to your skill, or your resources, or how much free time you have to think about the problem. And when you run into a
lethal challenge too difficult for you, you die. It may be unpleasant to think about, but that has been the reality for humans, for
thousands upon thousands of years. The same thing could as easily happen to the whole human species, if the human species runs into
an unfair challenge. If human beings did not age, so that 100-year-olds had the same death rate as 15-year-olds, we would not be
immortal. We would last only until the probabilities caught up with us. To live even a million years, as an unaging human in a world
as risky as our own, you must somehow drive your annual probability of accident down to nearly zero. You may not drive; you may
not fly; you may not walk across the street even after looking both ways, for it is still too great a risk. Even if you abandoned all
thoughts of fun, gave up living to preserve your life, you couldn't navigate a million-year obstacle course. It would be, not physically
impossible, but cognitively impossible. The human species, Homo sapiens, is unaging but not immortal. Hominids have survived
this long only because, for the last million years, there were no arsenals of hydrogen bombs, no spaceships to
steer asteroids toward Earth, no biological weapons labs to produce superviruses, no recurring annual prospect of nuclear war
or nanotechnological war or rogue Artificial Intelligence. To survive any appreciable time, we need to drive down each
risk to nearly zero. "Fairly good" is not good enough to last another million years. It seems like an unfair challenge. Such
competence is not historically typical of human institutions, no matter how hard they try. For decades the U.S. and
the U.S.S.R. avoided nuclear war, but not perfectly; there were close calls, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. If we postulate
that future minds exhibit the same mixture of foolishness and wisdom, the same mixture of heroism and selfishness, as
the minds we read about in history books - then the game of existential risk is already over; it was lost from the beginning.
We might survive for another decade, even another century, but not another million years. But the human mind is
not the limit of the possible. Homo sapiens represents the first general intelligence. We were born into the uttermost
beginning of things, the dawn of mind. With luck, future historians will look back and describe the present world as an
awkward in-between stage of adolescence, when humankind was smart enough to create tremendous problems
for itself, but not quite smart enough to solve them. Yet before we can pass out of that stage of adolescence, we
must, as adolescents, confront an adult problem: the challenge of smarter-than-human intelligence. This is the
way out of the high-mortality phase of the life cycle, the way to close the window of vulnerability; it is also
probably the single most dangerous risk we face. Artificial Intelligence is one road into that challenge; and I think it is the road
we will end up taking. I think that, in the end, it will prove easier to build a 747 from scratch, than to scale up an existing bird or
graft on jet engines. I do not want to play down the colossal audacity of trying to build, to a precise purpose and design, something
smarter than ourselves. But let us pause and recall that intelligence
is not the first thing human science has ever
encountered which proved difficult to understand. Stars were once mysteries, and chemistry, and biology. Generations
of investigators tried and failed to understand those mysteries, and they acquired the reputation of being impossible to mere science.
Once upon a time, no one understood why some matter was inert and lifeless, while other matter pulsed with blood and vitality. No
one knew how living matter reproduced itself, or why our hands obeyed our mental orders. Lord Kelvin wrote: "The influence of
animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific inquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the
motions of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle of our human free-will, and in the growth of generation after
generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely different from any possible result of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms."
(Quoted in MacFie 1912.) All scientific ignorance is
hallowed by ancientness. Each and every absence of
knowledge dates back to the dawn of human curiosity; and the hole lasts through the ages, seemingly eternal, right up until
someone fills it. I think it is possible for mere fallible humans to succeed on the challenge of building Friendly AI. But only
if intelligence ceases to be a sacred mystery to us, as life was a sacred mystery to Lord Kelvin. Intelligence must cease
to be any kind of mystery whatever, sacred or not. We must execute the creation of Artificial Intelligence as the exact
application of an exact art. And maybe then we can win.
Reformism builds coalitions for longterm to solve the environment
Davidoff, Parks Council of New York, '91 (Linda, Defending The Earth: Debate Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, p.
64)
Murray and Dave probably see this as very tame stuff. Both of them seem to think that our society, indeed our civilization, is "rotten to
the core" and that it is unreformable. Well, frankly, I don't believe that our society is rotten to the core. Sure, our society is unjust. Our
society is exploitative. Our society is making unwise decisions as an entity. Its institutional parts are not yet fully representative of the
public interest and we have to change that. But we live in an enormously stable society, one that changes slowly and
reluctantly. I don't see a revolution around the corner, eco-anarchist or otherwise. So, I think we better get good
at old-fashioned reformism. That's what makes a real difference in the here and now. I remember working against a
presidential candidate during the Vietnam era who wanted to bomb the Vietnamese back to the Stone Age. I worked instead for
somebody who wasn't ready to go that far. It wasn't much of a choice, but it was the only one we were offered in the electoral arena
Because in the
end, those of us who wanted to stop the war short of completely destroying Vietnamese society and culture
needed to be effective in putting pressure to bear on the government to limit its destructiveness. And we did that.
Indeed, we eventually stopped the war. We eventually convinced people in influential positions in our society to
pay attention to our views and to respond favorably. That, I think, is the key to political effectiveness. It is quite
possible to work within the institutions that are available to us to make things happen the way we want. The
trick is being willing to make effective use of the machinery of government available to us and getting our
message across to the general public and government decisionmakers without alienating them. Talk of
revolution, using "rotten to the core" language, and refusing to take part in elections, political parties, the mass media, the
courts, and lobbying all seem counter-productive to me.
where key decisions are made, and I think it mattered. It was important to work for the less destructive candidate.
Insecurity and disorder aren’t inevitable—careful future planning has been enormously effective.
Debates amongst citizens are key to assessing probability and effectively planning.
Kurasawa, 04 (Professor of Sociology, York University of Toronto, Fuyuki, Constellations Volume 11, No 4, 2004).
Moreover, keeping in mind the sobering lessons of the past century cannot but make us wary about humankind’s
supposedly unlimited ability for problemsolving or discovering solutions in time to avert calamities. In fact, the
historical track-record of last-minute, technical ‘quick-fixes’ is hardly reassuring. What’s more, most of the serious
perils that we face today (e.g., nuclear waste, climate change, global terrorism, genocide and civil war) demand
complex, sustained, long-term strategies of planning, coordination, and execution. On the other hand, an examination
of fatalism makes it readily apparent that the idea that humankind is doomed from the outset puts off any attempt to minimize risks for
our successors, essentially condemning them to face cataclysms unprepared. An a priori pessimism is also unsustainable
given the fact that long-term preventive action has had (and will continue to have) appreciable beneficial effects; the
examples of medical research, the welfare state, international humanitarian law, as well as strict environmental
regulations in some countries stand out among many others. The evaluative framework proposed above should not be
restricted to the critique of misappropriations of farsightedness, since it can equally support public deliberation with a reconstructive
intent, that is, democratic discussion and debate about a future that human beings would freely self-determine. Inverting Foucault’s
Nietzschean metaphor, we can think of genealogies of the future that could perform a farsighted mapping out of the possible ways of
organizing social life. They are, in other words, interventions into the present intended to facilitate global civil society’s participation
in shaping the field of possibilities of what is to come. Once competing dystopian visions are filtered out on the basis of
their analytical credibility, ethical commitments, and political underpinnings and consequences, groups and
individuals can assess the remaining legitimate catastrophic scenarios through the lens of genealogical mappings of the
future. Hence, our first duty consists in addressing the present-day causes of eventual perils, ensuring that the paths we decide upon do
not contract the range of options available for our posterity.42 Just as importantly, the practice of genealogically inspired
farsightedness nurtures the project of an autonomous future, one that is socially self-instituting. In so doing, we can acknowledge that
the future is a human creation instead of the product of metaphysical and extra-social forces (god, nature, destiny, etc.), and begin to
reflect upon and deliberate about the kind of legacy we want to leave for those who will follow us. Participants in global civil
society can then take – and in many instances have already taken – a further step by committing themselves to
socio-political struggles forging a world order that, aside from not jeopardizing human and environmental
survival, is designed to rectify the sources of transnational injustice that will continue to inflict needless
suffering upon future generations if left unchallenged.
Environmental security challenges state legitimacy and lead to a paradigm shift away from militarism
Barnett ‘1 [Jon, Research Council Fellow In The School Of Social And Environmental Enquiry At The University Of Melbourne,
The Meaning Of Environmental Security: Ecological Politics And Policy In The New Security Era, Chapter 9, 137-41]
The question of whether it is valid to understand environmental problems as security problems recurs throughout any thoughtful
discussion of environmental security. The dilemma should by now be apparent; securitising environmental issues runs the
risk that the strategic/realist approach will coopt and colonise the, environmental agenda rather than respond
positively to environmental problems (as discussed in Chapter 6). For this reason critics of environmental security, such as
Deudney (1991) and-Brock (1991), Suggest that it is dangerous to understand environmental problems as security issues: This book's
position on the matter has been emerging in previous chapters. It contends that the problem turns not on the presentation of
environmental problems as security issues, but on-the meaning and practice of security in present times.
Environmental security, wittingly or not, contests the legitimacy of the realist conception of security by pointing
to the contradictions of security as the defence of territory and resistance to change. It seeks to work from within
the prevailing conception of security, but to be successful it must do so with a strong sense of purpose and a
solid theoretical base. Understanding environmental problems as security problems is thus a form of conceptual
speculation. It is one manifestation of the pressure the Green movement has exerted on states since the late 1960s.
This pressure has pushed state legitimacy nearer to collapse, for if the state cannot control a problem as
elemental as environmental degradation, then what is its purpose? This legitimacy problem suggests that
environmental degradation cannot further intensify without fundamental change or the collapse of the state.
This in turn implies that state-sanctioned environmentally degrading practices such as those undertaken in the
name of national security cannot extend their power further if it means further exacerbation of environmental
insecurity. While the system may resist environmental security's challenge for change, it must also resist
changes for the worse. In terms of the conceptual venture, therefore, appropriation by the security apparatus of the
concept of environmental security is unlikely to result in an increase in environmental insecurity (although the
concept itself may continue to be corrupted). On the other hand, succeeding in the conceptual venture may mean a
positive modification of the theory and practice of national security. It may also mean that national governments
will take environmental problems more seriously, reduce defence budgets, and generally implement policies for
a more peaceful and environmentally secure world. This dual goal of demilitarisation and upgrading policy may
well be a case of wanting to have one's cake and eat it — but either the having or the eating is sufficient
justification for the concept (Brock 1996). The worst outcome would be if the state ceased to use the concept of
environmental security, heralding the end of the contest and requiring that the interests of peace and the
environment be advocated through alternative discourses. This is perhaps the only real failure that is likely to
ensue from the project of environmental security.
2AC – Kritik Top Level
Framework – negating is about disproving the resolution by showing a competitive policy option is better
than the aff’s topical example – discursive arguments and non-policy alternatives don’t count. Our
argument is a voter – critiques are cheating, it’s the wrong forum, they should lose for skewing time,
education and competitive equity.
This is the most predictable framework:
Everything after the colon matters.
Webster’s Guide to Grammar and Writing – 2000 http://ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/colon.htm
Use of a colon before a list or an explanation that is preceded by a clause that can stand by itself. Think of the colon as a gate, inviting one to go on… If
the
introductory phrase preceding the colon is very brief and the clause following the colon represents the real business of the
sentence, begin the clause after the colon with a capital letter.
“Resolved” expresses intent to implement the plan
American Heritage Dictionary 2000 www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=resolved
To find a solution to; solve …To bring to a usually successful conclusion
“Should” denotes an expectation of that
American Heritage Dictionary – 2000 [www.dictionary.com]
3 Used to express probability or expectation
“The USFG” is the government in Washington D.C.
Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2000 [http://encarta.msn.com]
“The federal government of the United States is centered in Washington DC.”
and, our definition excludes action by smaller political groups or individuals.
Black’s Law Dictionary Seventh Edition Ed. Bryan A. Garner (chief) 1999
A national government that exercises some degree of control over smaller political units that have surrendered
some degree of power in exchange for the right to participate in national political matters.
Federal government 1.
Predictability precedes all other issues – it determines research, clash and education and makes debate
productive.
Ruth Lessl Shively, Assoc Prof Polisci at Texas A&M, 2000 Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 182-3
The point may seem trite, as surely the ambiguists would agree that basic terms must be shared before they can be resisted and problematized. In fact, they are often
very candid about this seeming paradox in their approach: the paradoxical or "parasitic" need of the subversive for an order to subvert. But admitting the paradox is
not helpful if, as usually happens here, its implications are ignored; or if the only implication drawn is that order or harmony is an unhappy fixture of human life. For
what the paradox should tell us is that some kinds of harmonies or orders are, in fact, good for resistance; and some ought to be fully supported. As
such, it should counsel against the kind of careless rhetoric that lumps all orders or harmonies together as arbitrary and inhumane. Clearly some basic accord
about the terms of contest is a necessary ground for all further contest. It may be that if the ambiguists wish to remain full-fledged ambiguists, they
cannot admit to these implications, for to open the door to some agreements or reasons as good and some orders as helpful or necessary, is to open the door to some
sort of rationalism. Perhaps they might just continue to insist that this initial condition is ironic, but that the irony should not stand in the way of the real business of
subversion.Yet difficulties remain. For agreement is not simply the initial condition, but the continuing ground, for contest. If we are to successfully communicate our
disagreements, we cannot simply agree on basic terms and then proceed to debate without attention to further agreements. For debate and contest are forms of
dialogue: that is, they are activities premised on the building of progressive agreements. Imagine, for instance, that two people are having an argument
about the issue of gun control. As noted earlier, in any argument, certain initial agreements will be needed just to begin the discussion. At the very least, the two
discussants must agree on basic terms: for example, they must have some shared sense of what gun control is about; what is at issue in arguing about it;
what facts are being contested, and so on. They must also agree—and they do so simply by entering into debate—that they will not use violence or threats in making
their cases and that they are willing to listen to, and to be persuaded by, good arguments. Such agreements are simply implicit in the act of argumentation.
If there is no truth, then there is no means of resisting lies—we would be powerless in the face of
holocaust denial or conviction of an innocent person at trial. Truth and morality go hand in hand.
Comte- Sponville 91 (Andre, Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne. “The Brute, the Sophist, and the Aesthete “Art in the
Service of Illusion”, Why We are Not Nietzscheans).
If there is no truth, how are you going to resist lies? What would be the sense of asking, for instance, whether Dreyfus was
really guilty or who really set the Reichstag on fire? If there is no knowledge, how will you fight obscurantism and
ignorance? If there are no facts but only interpretations, what objections will you make to the revisionists who
maintain that the gas chambers are not, precisely, a fact, only a point of view, a mere hypothesis, a mere interpretation by
certain historians connected to the Jewish lobby? It may be objected that that was not Nietzsche's point of view. Certainly, those were
not his examples. As for his point of view, I wouldn't know. In The Antichrist, after having praised Pontius Pilate's attitude ("One Jew
more or less-what does it matter?"), Nietzsche adds: The noble scorn of a Roman, confronted with an impudent abuse of the word
"truth," has enriched the New Testament with the only saying that has value one which is its criticism, even its annihilation: "What is
truth?". Indeed, any judge can say that when he needs to condemn an innocent man. But can we accept that?
Should we accept it? And how do we prevent it, if there are neither facts nor truths? In aphorism of Beyond Good
and Evil, after having announced, you will recall, that the falseness of a judgment was not for him an objection
against that judgment since the only thing that counts is its vital utility, Nietzsche concludes: To recognize
untruth as a condition of life-that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a
philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil. Logic and morality go
together.
The critique refuses to accept the same falsifiable review our evidence goes through – disproves their
methodology, destroys academic debate, and causes extinction.
Coyne, 06 – Author and Writer for the Times (Jerry A., “A plea for empiricism”, FOLLIES OF THE WISE, Dissenting essays,
405pp. Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker and Hoard, 1 59376 101 5)
Supernatural forces and events, essential aspects of most religions, play no role in science, not because we
exclude them deliberately, but because they have never been a useful way to understand nature. Scientific
“truths” are empirically supported observations agreed on by different observers. Religious “truths,” on the other
hand, are personal, unverifiable and contested by those of different faiths. Science is nonsectarian: those who
disagree on scientific issues do not blow each other up. Science encourages doubt; most religions quash it. But
religion is not completely separable from science. Virtually all religions make improbable claims that are in principle
empirically testable, and thus within the domain of science: Mary, in Catholic teaching, was bodily taken to heaven, while
Muhammad rode up on a white horse; and Jesus (born of a virgin) came back from the dead. None of these claims has been
corroborated, and while science would never accept them as true without evidence, religion does. A mind that accepts both science
and religion is thus a mind in conflict. Yet scientists, especially beleaguered American evolutionists, need the support of the many
faithful who respect science. It is not politically or tactically useful to point out the fundamental and unbreachable gaps between
science and theology. Indeed, scientists and philosophers have written many books (equivalents of Leibnizian theodicy) desperately
trying to show how these areas can happily cohabit. In his essay, “Darwin goes to Sunday School”, Crews reviews several of these
works, pointing out with brio the intellectual contortions and dishonesties involved in harmonizing religion and science. Assessing
work by the evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould, the philosopher Michael Ruse, the theologian John Haught and others, Crews concludes,
“When coldly examined . . . these productions invariably prove to have adulterated scientific doctrine or to have emptied religious
dogma of its commonly accepted meaning”. Rather than suggesting any solution (indeed, there is none save adopting a form of
“religion” that makes no untenable empirical claims), Crews points out the dangers to the survival of our planet
arising from a rejection of Darwinism. Such rejection promotes apathy towards overpopulation, pollution,
deforestation and other environmental crimes: “So long as we regard ourselves as creatures apart who need only repent of our
personal sins to retain heaven’s blessing, we won’t take the full measure of our species-wise responsibility for these calamities”.
Crews includes three final essays on deconstruction and other misguided movements in literary theory. These
also show “follies of the wise” in that they involve interpretations of texts that are unanchored by evidence.
Fortunately, the harm inflicted by Lacan and his epigones is limited to the good judgement of professors of
literature. Follies of the Wise is one of the most refreshing and edifying collections of essays in recent years. Much like Christopher
Hitchens in the UK, Crews serves a vital function as National Sceptic. He ends on a ringing note: “ The human race has produced
only one successfully validated epistemology, characterizing all scrupulous inquiry into the real world, from
quarks to poems. It is, simply, empiricism, or the submitting of propositions to the arbitration of evidence that is
acknowledged to be such by all of the contending parties. Ideas that claim immunity from such review, whether
because of mystical faith or privileged “clinical insight” or the say-so of eminent authorities, are not to be
countenanced until they can pass the same skeptical ordeal to which all other contenders are subjected.” As
science in America becomes ever more harried and debased by politics and religion, we desperately need to heed Crews’s plea for
empiricism.
Life comes first
Fried ’94 (Charles Fried “Rights and Wrongs as Absolute.” Absolutism and Its Consequentialist Critics. , p.
76. Ed. Haber 1994)
Even within such boundaries we can imagine extreme cases where killing an innocent person may save a whole nation. In
such cases it seems fanatical to maintain the absoluteness of the judgment, to do right even if the heavens will in
fact fall. And so the catastrophic may cause the absoluteness of right and wrong to yield, but even then it would be a non
sequitur to argue (as consequentialists are fond of doing) that this proves that judgments of right and wrong are always a matter of
degree, depending on the relative goods to be attained and harms to be avoided. I believe, on the contrary, that the concept of the
catastrophic is a distinct concept just because it identifies the extreme situations in which the usual categories of judgment
(including the category of right and wrong) no longer apply. At the other end of the spectrum, there is the concept of the trivial, the
de minimis where the absolute categories do not yet apply. And the trivial also does not prove that right and wrong are really only a
matter of degree. It is because of these complexities and because the term absolute is really only suggestive of a more complex
structure, that I also refer to the norms of right and wrong not as absolute but as categorical.
Consequences must come first – it’s crucial to freedom and self-reflection
Williams 2005
(Michael, Professor of International Politics at the University of Wales—Aberystwyth, The Realist
Tradition and the Limits of International Relations, p. 174-176)
A commitment to an ethic of consequences reflects a deeper ethic of criticism, of ‘self-clarification’, and thus of
reflection upon the values adopted by an individual or a collectivity. It is part of an attempt to make critical evaluation an intrinsic
element of responsibility. Responsibility to this more fundamental ethic gives the ethic of consequences meaning. Consequentialism
and responsibility are here drawn into what Schluchter, in terms that will be familiar to anyone conversant with constructivism in
International Relations, has called a ‘reflexive principle’. In the wilful Realist vision, scepticism and consequentialism are
linked in an attempt to construct not just a more substantial vision of political responsibility, but also the kinds of
actors who might adopt it, and the kinds of social structures that might support it. A consequentialist ethic is not
simply a choice adopted by actors: it is a means of trying to foster particular kinds of self-critical individuals and societies, and in so
doing to encourage a means by which one can justify and foster a politics of responsibility. The ethic of responsibility in wilful
Realism thus involves a commitment to both autonomy and limitation, to freedom and restraint, to an acceptance
of limits and the criticism of limits. Responsibility clearly involves prudence and an accounting for current structures and their
historical evolution; but it is not limited to this, for it seeks ultimately the creation of responsible subjects within a philosophy of
limits. Seen in this light, the Realist commitment to objectivity appears quite differently. Objectivity in terms of
consequentialist analysis does not simply take the actor or action as given, it is a political practice — an attempt
to foster a responsible self, undertaken by an analyst with a commitment to objectivity which is itself based in a
desire to foster a politics of responsibility. Objectivity in the sense of coming to terms with the ‘reality’ of
contextual conditions and likely outcomes of action is not only necessary for success, it is vital for self-reflection,
for sustained engagement with the practical and ethical adequacy of one’s views. The blithe, self-serving, and
uncritical stances of abstract moralism or rationalist objectivism avoid self-criticism by refusing to engage with
the intractability of the world ‘as it is’. Reducing the world to an expression of their theoretical models, political
platforms, or ideological programmes, they fail to engage with this reality, and thus avoid the process of selfreflection at the heart of responsibility. By contrast, Realist objectivity takes an engagement with this intractable ‘object’ that
is not reducible to one’s wishes or will as a necessary condition of ethical engagement, self-reflection, and self-creation.7 Objectivity
is not a naïve naturalism in the sense of scientific laws or rationalist calculation; it is a necessary engagement with a world that eludes
one’s will. A recognition of the limits imposed by ‘reality’ is a condition for a recognition of one’s own limits —
that the world is not simply an extension of one’s own will. But it is also a challenge to use that intractability as
a source of possibility, as providing a set of openings within which a suitably chastened and yet paradoxically energised
will to action can responsibly be pursued. In the wilful Realist tradition, the essential opacity of both the self and the world are taken
as limiting principles. Limits upon understanding provide chastening parameters for claims about the world and actions within it.
But they also provide challenging and creative openings within which diverse forms of life can be developed: the
limited unity of the self and the political order is the precondition for freedom. The ultimate opacity of the
world is not to be despaired of: it is a condition of possibility for the wilful, creative construction of selves and
social orders which embrace the diverse human potentialities which this lack of essential or intrinsic order makes
possible.8 But it is also to be aware of the less salutary possibilities this involves. Indeterminacy is not synonymous with absolute
freedom — it is both a condition of, and imperative toward, responsibility.
Regardless of anti fascist intent, Nietzsche’s celebration of hierarchy and opposition to democratic values
make his philosophy easy to exploit by the far Right.
Stackelberg, 02 Professor of History at Gonzaga University (Roderick, Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism?: On the Uses and
Abuses of a Philosophy, “Critique as Apologetics” ed. by Jacob Golomb, Robert Solomon Wistrich)
Nietzsche’s significance and continuing relevance throughout the twentieth century is the result of the widespread recognition that his
works are perhaps the most representative statement of the late nineteenth century sense of crisis induced by the “death of God,” the
perceived collapse of objective meaning and universal truth. His prophetic call for a “transvaluation of values” could appeal to a great
variety of alienated individuals and groups by no means restricted to the political right. This was due at least in part to the nature of
Nietzsche’s philosophy, which is deliberately perspectival and open-ended and therefore subject to a variety of interpretations.
Nietzsche made a definitive rendering of his ideas virtually impossible by refusing to foreclose any experimental options in the
process of thinking and self-overcoming. His thought can not be classified as simply destructive and reactionary or emancipator and
progressive. A great variety of political causes have found inspiration in Nietzschean thought, and even today there is nothing
approaching complete consensus on Nietzsche’s politics. However, if advocacy or rejection of human equality as a social
idea determines the place of individuals or movements on the political spectrum, Nietzsche clearly belongs well
on the Right, perhaps even on the extreme Right. Nietzsche and the Nazis (and their Germanomanic precursors as well
as Christian conservatives) shared the same political enemies—the democratic, and socialist movements that
emanated from the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. This is probably the most important reason that
Nietzsche’s philosophy could be so readily exploited by the Nazis, despite his unequivocal condemnation of nationalism,
anti-Semitism, the German Reich, Wagnerian Germanophilia, and romanticism. It is also the main reason Nietzsche has been
anathema to the Left, especially the Marxist Left, which has traditionally viewed Nieztsche as one of the major precursors of fascism.
As a political thinker Nietzsche has always appealed mostly to political conservatives who value hierarchy and
₪ stopped here at 10:06 ₪
rank, the authority of elites,
and the subordination of the masses. His works,
as much as Wagner’s, reflected the undemocratic tenor of German society in his day. Though he may have thought of his “herd
animals” and “last men” as members of oppressive “silent” or “moral” majorities, not excluded or exploited groups, and though he
may have opposed democracy at least in part because of his apprehensions of the destructive form that the mobilization of the masses
was bound to take in Germany, his approach was too apolitical to make these essential distinctions clear. Nietzsche’s rejection of
progress and equality made aspects of his philosophy usable for the Nazis without having to distort them.
Though a critic of idealist “self-deception” and national vanity, he shared the idealist disdain for merely political
freedoms. True to the idealist heritage, Nietzsche’s formula for human salvation was not to change material
conditions through reform for human salvation was not to change material conditions through reform or revolution, as
progressives would have it, but to change human ideals. His precepts aimed not at the creation of a just society, but at the
development of a higher type of human being. To him, as to the idealists he criticized, politics (i.e., agitation for social and political
reform) was a debased activity. The field of Nietzsche interpretation will continue to provide the terrain as it has throughout the
twentieth century, on which fundamental issues are symbolically fought out. Diverse movements and schools of though will continue
to appeal to his thought. It is precisely because of his radical denial of ultimate truth that today he is hailed as the philosopher of
postmodernism. But the criticisms that have been raised against postmodernism—that its political implications even in its left-wing
appropriations are profoundly conservative—can be leveled against Nietzsche himself. Nietzsche’s failure to provide any
concrete social analysis renders futile all efforts to pin down his substantive political position and leaves
concepts like “herd animals,” “blond beasts,” “supermen,” “the will to power,” “party of life,” and “destruction of all that
is degenerate and parasitical” to be filled with substantive meaning by his various interpreters. This lack of political
consciousness made his philosophy useful to the Nazis and it makes his thinking serviceable to their apologists
today.
The alt does not solve – only the perm does – their alt only influences the judge – that doesn’t spillover –
worse policies are inevitable that makes their k impacts inevitable - no affect the state – that makes
extinction inevitable and turns the k
Boggs, 97 (Carl, National University, Los Angeles, Theory and Society, “The great retreat: Decline of the public sphere in late
twentieth-century America”, December, Volume 26, Number 6,
http://www.springerlink.com.proxy.library.emory.edu/content/m7254768m63h16r0/fulltext.pdf)
The decline of the public sphere in late twentieth-century America poses a series of great dilemmas and challenges. Many
ideological currents scrutinized here – localism, metaphysics, spontaneism, post-modernism, Deep Ecology –
intersect with and reinforce each other. While these currents have deep origins in popular movements of the
1960s and 1970s, they remain very much alive in the 1990s. Despite their different outlooks and trajectories,
they all share one thing in common: a depoliticized expression of struggles to combat and overcome alienation.
The false sense of empowerment that comes with such mesmerizing impulses is accompanied by a loss of
public engagement, an erosion of citizenship and a depleted capacity of individuals in large groups to work for social change.
As this ideological quagmire worsens, urgent problems that are destroying the fabric of American society will
go unsolved – perhaps even unrecognized – only to fester more ominously in the future. And such problems
(ecological crisis, poverty, urban decay, spread of infectious diseases, technological displacement of workers) cannot be
understood outside the larger social and global context of internationalized markets, finance, and communications. Paradoxically, the
widespread retreat from politics, often inspired by localist sentiment, comes at a time when agendas that ignore or sidestep these
global realities will, more than ever, be reduced to impotence. In his commentary on the state of citizenship today, Wolin refers to the
increasing sublimation and dilution of politics, as larger numbers of people turn away from public concerns toward private ones. By
diluting the life of common involvements, we negate the very idea of politics as a source of public ideals and visions.
74 In the meantime, the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The unyielding truth is that, even as the ethos of antipolitics becomes more compelling and even fashionable in the United States, it is the vagaries of political power that will continue to
decide the fate of human societies. This last point demands further elaboration. The shrinkage of politics hardly means that corporate
colonization will be less of a reality, that social hierarchies will somehow disappear, or that gigantic state and military structures will
lose their hold over people’s lives. Far from it: the space abdicated by a broad citizenry, well-informed and ready to participate
at many levels, can in fact be filled by authoritarian and reactionary elites – an already familiar dynamic in many lesserdeveloped countries. The fragmentation and chaos of a Hobbesian world, not very far removed from the rampant individualism, social
Darwinism, and civic violence that have been so much a part of the American landscape, could be the prelude to a powerful
Leviathan designed to impose order in the face of disunity and atomized retreat. In this way the eclipse of politics might
set the stage for a reassertion of politics in more virulent guise – or it might help further rationalize the existing power structure. In
either case, the state would likely become what Hobbes anticipated: the embodiment of those universal, collective interests that had
vanished from civil society. 75
Life is a pre-requisite to everything
Seeley, ‘86
(Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, The Handbook of Non-Violence, p. 269-70)
In moral reasoning prediction of consequences is nearly always impossible. One balances the risks of an action
against its benefits; one also considers what known damage the action would do. Thus a surgeon in deciding whether to perform
an operation weighs the known effects (the loss of some nerve function, for example) and risks (death) against the benefits, and
weighs also the risks and benefits of not performing surgery. Morally, however, human extinction is unlike any other risk. No
conceivable human good could be worth the extinction of the race, for in order to be a human good it must be
experienced by human beings . Thus extinction is one result we dare not-may not-risk. Though not conclusively
established, the risk of extinction is real enough to make nuclear war utterly impermissible under any sane moral
code.
Always a value to life. Life should be first.
Steven Lee is the H.L.A. Hart Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for Ethics and Philosophy of Law and University College for
Michaelmas, as well as Visiting Research Fellow at the Changing Character of War Programme. He is a Professor in the Humanities
and Professor of Philosophy at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Reviewed work(s): Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism. by
John Finnis ; Joseph M. Boyle, Jr. ;
Germain Grisez ; Jefferson McMahan Source: Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1990), pp. 93-106 Published
by: Blackwell Publishing Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265364
The claim that nuclear devastation and Soviet domination cannot be compared in consequentialist terms rests largely on the claim that
the kinds of harm or evil involved in these outcomes are incommensurable. For, "the values of life, liberty, fairness, and so on, are
diverse. How many people's lives are equivalent to the liberty of how many-whether the same or other-persons? No one can say" (p.
241). When one con- siders the two outcomes, "[e]ach seems the more repugnant while one is focusing upon it" (p. 240). But this
incommensurability claim is not plausible. Life and political liberty are diverse goods, but having liberty is only part of what
makes life worth living. Certainly most people would prefer loss of liberty to loss of life, and even if
consequential value is not a function solely of preferences, the preferences in this case reflect a real difference
in value. Even where liberty is lacking, a life has much potential for value. Of course, it is unlikely that everyone
would die in a nu- clear war, but it is likely that many of the living would envy the dead. As the authors point out, however, we do not
know how destructive the nu- clear war might be, nor how repressive the Soviet domination. A very limited nuclear war might be
preferable to a very repressive Soviet-im- posed regime. But these are unlikely extremes. In terms of expected util- ities, domination
is preferable to war. In this sense, Red is better than dead, and the consequentialist comparison can be made.
Yes value to life. Save the most lives
Bernstein ‘2 (Richard J., Vera List Prof. Phil. – New School for Social Research, “Radical Evil: A
Philosophical Interrogation”, p. 188-192)
There is a basic value inherent in organic being, a basic affirmation, "The Yes' of Life" (IR 81). 15 "The selfaffirmation of being becomes emphatic in the opposition of life to death. Life is the explicit confrontation of being with
not-being. . . . The 'yes' of all striving is here sharpened by the active `no' to not-being" (IR 81-2). Furthermore — and this is the
crucial point for Jonas — this affirmation of life that is in all organic being has a binding obligatory force upon
human beings. This blindly self-enacting "yes" gains obligating force in the seeing freedom of man, who as the
supreme outcome of nature's purposive labor is no longer its automatic executor but, with the power obtained
from knowledge, can become its destroyer as well. He must adopt the "yes" into his will and impose the "no" to
not-being on his power. But precisely this transition from willing to obligation is the critical point of moral theory at which
attempts at laying a foundation for it come so easily to grief. Why does now, in man, that become a duty which hitherto "being" itself
took care of through all individual willings? (IR 82). We discover here the transition from is to "ought" — from the self-affirmation of
life to the binding obligation of human beings to preserve life not only for the present but also for the future. But why do we need a
new ethics? The subtitle of The Imperative of Responsibility — In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age — indicates why we
need a new ethics. Modern technology has transformed the nature and consequences of human ac-tion so radically
that the underlying premises of traditional ethics are no longer valid. For the first time in history human beings
possess the knowledge and the power to destroy life on this planet, including human life. Not only is there the
new possibility of total nuclear disaster; there are the even more invidious and threatening possibilities that
result from the unconstrained use of technologies that can destroy the environment required for life. The major
transformation brought about by modern technology is that the consequences of our actions frequently exceed by far anything we can
envision. Jonas was one of the first philosophers to warn us about the unprecedented ethical and political problems that arise with the
rapid development of biotechnology. He claimed that this was happening at a time when there was an "ethical vacuum," when there
did not seem to be any effective ethical principles to limit ot guide our ethical decisions. In the name of scientific and technological
"progress," there is a relentless pressure to adopt a stance where virtually anything is permissible, includ-ing transforming the genetic
structure of human beings, as long as it is "freely chosen." We need, Jonas argued, a new categorical imperative that might
be formulated as follows: "Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine
human life"; or expressed negatively: "Act so that the effects of your action are not destructive of the future possibility of such
a life"; or simply: "Do not compromise the conditions for an indefinite continuation of humanity on earth"; or again
turned positive: "In your present choices, include the future wholeness of Man among the objects of your will." (IR 11)
Preventing extinction is more moral than preventing misery because we can always recover from loss of
value to life
Leslie 98 (John, Oxford educated, former philosophy professor @ U of Guelph, Lecturer appointed by British Academy, "The end
of the world: the science and ethics of human extinction", London: Routledge, April 17, pp. 135-7) GZ
Another is this. It
could well seem that only short-term dangers could be much threat to the very survival of the
human race or its descendant races. What can it matter that, for example, the sun will become a red giant and boil the Earth's
oceans some five billion years If they had survived until then, humans or their descendants could be expected to have spread to Pluto,
or to space colonies positioned at a comfortable distance, or to the neighbourhoods of other stars. Humankind's eggs would no longer
be all in the one basket. Not unless, that's to say, a vacuum metastability disaster—see Chapter 2—swept through the galaxy at
virtually the speed of light. But the chances of such a disaster can seem tiny, while those of its happening in the
distant future could be negligible: the necessary high-energy experiment would have been performed much earlier, or would
have been banned. Any good library can provide plenty of material on O'Neill cylinders Venus breathable at a cost of a few trillion
dollars, or plans for pushing galactic colonization forwards at a sizable fraction of the speed of light, either with humans or with
machines clever enough to be persons. Just shelves at home, there are fascinating discussions of all this in Barrow and Tipler's The
Anthropic Cosmological Principle; in Brand's Space Colonies; in Close's End; in Davoust's The Cosmic Water Hole; in Dyson's
Disturbing the Universe and Infinite in All Directions; in McDonough's The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence; in Rood and
Trefil's Are We Alone?; in Sagan's Cosmos; in Shklovskii and Sagan's Intelligent Life in the Universe; in Sullivan's We Are Not
Alone; and in Tipler's contribution to Rothman et al., Frontiers of Modern Physics.5 Some of the suggestions in these and similar
books involve speculative technological advances. For instance, they concern use of nuclear fusion or of antimatter in rocket engines,
or accelerating a light-sail to tremendous speed with lasers, subsequently using it to deposit nanomachinery which manufactures
braking-lasers to stop the massive passenger vehicles that follow.6 But back in the 1970s G. O'Neill had persuaded many people that
kilometer-long cylinders for ten thousand space colonists could be made quickly and inexpensively with the technology then already
available. And the chemical-rocket technology of those days—let alone the small H-bombs of Project Orion, each accelerating a
spaceship just a bit faster,7 an idea studied intensively in the US until the treaty banning nuclear explosions in space—could itself
conceivably have been used for sending space colonists to the neighbourhoods of other stars, albeit slowly: the Voyager spacecraft are
travelling at a speed which could take them to the nearest star in forty thousand years. Accelerated first by ground-based lasers and
then by sunlight, and using the light of the target stars for deceleration, light-sails could today do the job at higher speed and smaller
cost;8 and there have been various further suggestions, some of them now quite old, for space travel using fairly low technology.9 It
could well seem, then, that the human race is sure to have become secure against imminent extinction, more or
less regardless of whatever disasters thereafter hit the Earth, within five centuries from now, if only it manages
to survive for that long. What is surprising is that so little has been done to develop Earth-based artificial
biospheres to get us through whatever disasters those centuries may hold. People were all too quick to criticize the poor
science behind 'Biosphere 2' (see Chapter 1: oxygen levels dropped disastrously). What they tended to forget was that it had
been left to a single individual, E.Bass, to provide the necessary $150 million in funding. If one-hundredth as
much had been spent on developing artificial biospheres as on making nuclear weapons, a lengthy future for
humankind might by now be virtually assured. Always remember that for doomsday-argument purposes we aren't
interested just in whether such things as a pollution crisis would mean misery and death for billions. Misery
and death for billions would be immensely tragic, but might be followed by slow recovery and then a
glittering future for a human race which had learned its lesson. What is crucial to the doomsday argument—and,
I'd say, the issue most important from an ethical viewpoint—is whether anything could put an end to all humans.
Turn--elevating other values over extinction destroys the value to life and makes extinction certain—their
representation that they know the absolute truth of the value to life makes it easier to end it
Schell, 1982 (Jonathan, writer for the New Yorker and nuclear weapons expert, The Fate of the Earth)
For the generations that now have to decide whether or not to risk the future of the species, the implication of our species’ unique
place in the order of things is that while things in the life of mankind have worth, we must never raise that worth above
the life of mankind and above our respect for that life’s existence. To do this would be to make of our highest ideals
so many swords with which to destroy ourselves. To sum up the worth of our species by reference to some
particular standard, goal, or ideology, no matter how elevated or noble it might be, would be to prepare the way for
extinction by closing down in thought and feeling the open-ended possibilities for human development which
extinction would close down in fact. There is only one circumstance in which it might be possible to sum up the life and
achievement of the species, and that circumstance would be that it had already died, but then, of course, there would be no one left to
do the summing up. Only a generation that believed itself to be in possession of final, absolute truth could ever
conclude that it had reason to put an end to human life, and only generations that recognized the limits to their
own wisdom and virtue would be likely to subordinate their interests and dreams to the as yet unformed
interests and undreamed dreams of the future generations, and let human life go on.
As long as there is life there is hope of a better future – extinction is infinitely bad and it outweighs even
the worst injustices
Ochs ‘2
[Richard. Civil Rights Activist. “Biological Weapons Must Be Abolished Immediately” Free From Terror, 9 June 02.
www.freefromterror.net]
Against this tendency can be posed a rational alternative policy. To preclude possibilities of human extinction,
"patriotism" needs to be redefined to make humanity’s survival primary and absolute. Even if we lose our
cherished freedom, our sovereignty, our government or our Constitution, where there is life, there is hope.
What good is anything else if humanity is extinguished? This concept should be promoted to the center of
national debate.. For example, for sake of argument, suppose the ancient Israelites developed defensive bioweapons of mass
destruction when they were enslaved by Egypt. Then suppose these weapons were released by design or accident and wiped
everybody out? As bad as slavery is, extinction is worse. Our generation, our century, our epoch needs to take the long view.
We truly hold in our hands the precious gift of all future life. Empires may come and go, but who are the honored
custodians of life on earth? Temporal politicians? Corporate competitors? Strategic brinksmen? Military gamers? Inflated egos
dripping with testosterone? How can any sane person believe that national sovereignty is more important than
survival of the species? Now that extinction is possible, our slogan should be "Where there is life, there is
hope." No government, no economic system, no national pride, no religion, no political system can be placed
above human survival. The egos of leaders must not blind us. The adrenaline and vengeance of a fight must not
blind us. The game is over. If patriotism would extinguish humanity, then patriotism is the highest of all crimes.
Their emphasis on individual life affirmation denigrates community bonds necessary to prevent
extinction- the world has changed and become more interdependent since their 1891 ev was writtenJames J Winchester, 1994 - Nietzsche’s Aesthetic Turn, p. 158-9
As uninformed as it is to assume that there is an easy connection between his thought and National Socialism, it
is neither difficult nor misguided to consider his lack of social concern. Nietzsche saw one danger in our century,
but failed to see a second. His critique of herd mentality reads like a prophetic warning against the dictatorships
that have plagued and continue to haunt the twentieth century. But the context of our world has changed in ways that
Nietzsche never imagined. We now have, as never before, the ability to destroy-the planet. The threat of the destruction
of a society is not new. From the beginnings of Western literature in the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Western mind has contemplated
the destruction that, for example, warfare has wrought. Although the Trojan war destroyed almost everyone involved, both the victors
and the vanquished, it did not destroy the entire world. In the twentieth century, what has changed is the scale of destruction.
If a few countries destroy the ozone layer, the whole world perishes, or if two countries fight a nuclear or
biological war, the whole planet is threatened. This is something new in the history of the world.' The
interconnectedness of the entire world has grown dramatically. We live, as never before, in a global
community where our actions effect ever-larger numbers of the world's population. The earth's limits have become
more apparent. Our survival depends on working together to solve problems like global pollution. Granted mass
movements have instituted reigns of terror, but our survival as a planet is becoming ever-more predicated on
community efforts of the sort that Nietzsche's thought seems to denigrate if not preclude. I do not criticize
Nietzsche for failing to predict the rise of problems requiring communal efforts such as the disintegration of the ozone layer, acid rain,
and the destruction of South American rain forests. Noting his lack of foresight and his occasional extremism, I propose, in a
Nietzschean spirit, to reconsider his particular tastes, without abandoning his aesthetic turn. Statements like "common good is a selfcontradiction" are extreme, even for Nietzsche. He was not always so radical. Yet there is little room in Nietzsche's egoism
for the kind of cooperation and sense of community that is today so important for our survival. I am suggesting that
the time for Nietzsche's radical individualism is past. There are compelling pragmatic and aesthetic
reasons why we should now be more open to the positive possibilities of living in a community. There is
nothing new about society's need to work together. What has changed is the level of interconnectedness that the
technological age has pressed upon us.
Their nihilistic embrace is the same type of fantasy of escaping human conflicts and suffering that makes
extinction and genocide possible
Darrell Fasching, Religious Studies @ U. So. Florida ’93, (added people) gender paraphrased
(The ethical challenge of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, p.311-312)
In charge of the naked public square we will find the descendants of Nietzche’s madman who came to declare God dead and replace
him with the Ubermensch who lives by the will to power. Living in a world without horizons, a world of cultural relativism, they
propose a politics of realism, a MAD balance of terror, as the essence of human wisdom. Living in a world of relativism, they propose
to settle the issue by an arbitrary leap into an absolutized defense of their particular way of life. Nietzche’s madman asked: “How
shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves? “What was holiest and most powerful of all … has
bled to death under our knives. “Who will wipe this blood off us? “What water is there for us to clean ourselves.
“What festivals of astonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent. Is not the greatness of this deed too
great for us? Must not we ourselves become gods simply to seem worthy of it?” 101 We know now what games the
descendents of Nietzche’s madman invented. We know now what games the new gods who live by the will to power
invented. They were first played at Auschwitz and Hiroshima. The object of the game is to kill in order to heal
to assume total control over life and death. If being a god is being in control then no one is more totally in control then no one
is more totally in control of his or her life than the suicidal person who believes that suicide is “the final solution.” We have now
entered a civilizational era in which this private fantasy has become a public and collective fantasy. We live in a
world of realists who offer us a “final solution” to the ambiguity of the human predicament. Nietzche’s Ubermensch and
Nietzche’s madman[people] are one and the same being. This Nietzche an superior human being is the technological self
that assumes its Utopian transvaluation of all values can be accomplished through an autonomous will to power.
It is no accident that such Nietzche an selves can never leave off from giving in order to receive. This self, which is always trying to
fill the naked public square with the works of his or her own ego, ends up trapped in the cycle of eternal return, of eternal repetition.
For a self-transcendence that is not empty, that is not open to the infinite, can produce only an infinitizing (or absolutizing) of the self,
in which its will to power proceeds from decide to homicide. The will to power and its violence is never the midwife of the
Utopian but always and ever returns us to the world necessity and self-destruction—the wheel of external repition. There are those
who think that the MAD-ness of our civilization has dissipated with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the dissolution of the Soviet
Union. But it remains to be seen whether these changes are profound or merely surface changes. Psychologically, we seem to have
been given a reprieve. Nuclear annihilation may seem to us less imminent than at any other time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet
whether nuclear annihilation is viewed as imminent or relatively remote is more likely a symptom of a shift in the manic-depressive
rhythms of the Janus-faced myth that governs our era than any truly Utopian change. There are still enough nuclear weapons
in their silos to more than complete our annihilation. And with the break up of the Soviet Union there is less control over
these weapons than before—and more possibilities for their mindless use. But the MAD-ness of our era is not determined by whether
such weapons are ever used. The bomb simply brings into dramatic relief the madness that pervades our everyday world. The MADness is in our methods—our technobureaucratic methods. Our dehumanizing Nietzche an will to power feed the conflicts
that divide us, both within and between nations—conflicts that have tempted us (and will tempts us again) to
seek “final solutions.”
Preventing extinction is more moral than preventing misery because we can always recover from loss of
value to life
Leslie 98 (John, Oxford educated, former philosophy professor @ U of Guelph, Lecturer appointed by British Academy, "The end
of the world: the science and ethics of human extinction", London: Routledge, April 17, pp. 135-7) GZ
Another is this. It could well seem that only short-term dangers could be much threat to the very survival of the
human race or its descendant races. What can it matter that, for example, the sun will become a red giant and boil the Earth's
oceans some five billion years If they had survived until then, humans or their descendants could be expected to have spread to Pluto,
or to space colonies positioned at a comfortable distance, or to the neighbourhoods of other stars. Humankind's eggs would no longer
be all in the one basket. Not unless, that's to say, a vacuum metastability disaster—see Chapter 2—swept through the galaxy at
virtually the speed of light. But the chances of such a disaster can seem tiny, while those of its happening in the
distant future could be negligible: the necessary high-energy experiment would have been performed much earlier, or would
have been banned. Any good library can provide plenty of material on O'Neill cylinders Venus breathable at a cost of a few trillion
dollars, or plans for pushing galactic colonization forwards at a sizable fraction of the speed of light, either with humans or with
machines clever enough to be persons. Just shelves at home, there are fascinating discussions of all this in Barrow and Tipler's The
Anthropic Cosmological Principle; in Brand's Space Colonies; in Close's End; in Davoust's The Cosmic Water Hole; in Dyson's
Disturbing the Universe and Infinite in All Directions; in McDonough's The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence; in Rood and
Trefil's Are We Alone?; in Sagan's Cosmos; in Shklovskii and Sagan's Intelligent Life in the Universe; in Sullivan's We Are Not
Alone; and in Tipler's contribution to Rothman et al., Frontiers of Modern Physics.5 Some of the suggestions in these and similar
books involve speculative technological advances. For instance, they concern use of nuclear fusion or of antimatter in rocket engines,
or accelerating a light-sail to tremendous speed with lasers, subsequently using it to deposit nanomachinery which manufactures
braking-lasers to stop the massive passenger vehicles that follow.6 But back in the 1970s G. O'Neill had persuaded many people that
kilometer-long cylinders for ten thousand space colonists could be made quickly and inexpensively with the technology then already
available. And the chemical-rocket technology of those days—let alone the small H-bombs of Project Orion, each accelerating a
spaceship just a bit faster,7 an idea studied intensively in the US until the treaty banning nuclear explosions in space—could itself
conceivably have been used for sending space colonists to the neighbourhoods of other stars, albeit slowly: the Voyager spacecraft are
travelling at a speed which could take them to the nearest star in forty thousand years. Accelerated first by ground-based lasers and
then by sunlight, and using the light of the target stars for deceleration, light-sails could today do the job at higher speed and smaller
cost;8 and there have been various further suggestions, some of them now quite old, for space travel using fairly low technology.9 It
could well seem, then, that the human race is sure to have become secure against imminent extinction, more or
less regardless of whatever disasters thereafter hit the Earth, within five centuries from now, if only it manages
to survive for that long. What is surprising is that so little has been done to develop Earth-based artificial
biospheres to get us through whatever disasters those centuries may hold. People were all too quick to criticize the poor
science behind 'Biosphere 2' (see Chapter 1: oxygen levels dropped disastrously). What they tended to forget was that it had
been left to a single individual, E.Bass, to provide the necessary $150 million in funding. If one-hundredth as
much had been spent on developing artificial biospheres as on making nuclear weapons, a lengthy future for
humankind might by now be virtually assured. Always remember that for doomsday-argument purposes we aren't
interested just in whether such things as a pollution crisis would mean misery and death for billions. Misery
and death for billions would be immensely tragic, but might be followed by slow recovery and then a
glittering future for a human race which had learned its lesson. What is crucial to the doomsday argument—and,
I'd say, the issue most important from an ethical viewpoint—is whether anything could put an end to all humans.
If we win our solvency – that means we can stop suffering
Bryan Leiter, law professor @ Texas and Ph.D. from Michigan, 2004. p. __http://plato.stanford.edu /entries/nietzsche-moral political/__ (Bryan, “Nietzsche’s Moral and Political Philosophy)
Even without a political philosophy, however, there remain disturbing questions about Nietzsche's critique of morality and its political
implications. For example, when Nietzsche objects that morality is an obstacle to “the highest power and splendor
possible” to man, one is tempted to object that this gets things perversely backwards. For surely it is the lack of
morality in social policy and public institutions — a lack which permits widespread poverty and despair to
persist generation upon generation; that allows daily economic struggle and uncertainty to define the basic
character of most people's lives — that is most responsible for a lack of human flourishing. Surely, in a more moral
society, with a genuine commitment to social justice and human equality, there would be far more Goethes, far more creativity and
admirable human achievement. As Philippa Foot has sharply put it: “ How could one see the present dangers that the world
is in as showing that there is too much pity and too little egoism around?” (1973, p. 168).
The claim that suffering is inevitable and that intervention to suffering is life-negating is nothing more
than a thinly-veiled cover for mass rape and genocide – accepting their argument necessitates an
unconditional acceptance of brutal atrocities in all their forms.
Kelley L. Ross, professor of philosophy at L.A. Valley College, 2003. “Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)”,
__http://www.friesian.com /NIETZSCH.HTM__
While the discussion of Existentialism treated Nietzsche as an Existentialist before his time, with the death of God producing the kind
of nihilism characteristic of that movement, Nietzsche, for all his warnings about nihilism, does not in the end seem to be an actual
nihilist. He is a kind of positivist instead -- that certain actual events and practices are the root of genuine value. The events and
practices used by Nietzsche happen to be those of the most extreme 19th century Darwinian conception of
nature. This very often sounds good, since Nietzsche sees himself, and can easily impress others, as simply making a
healthy affirmation of life. Life for Nietzsche, however, is red in tooth and claw, and the most admirable and
interesting form of life is the triumphant Darwinian predator, who in general is paradigmatic of beauty, grace,
strength, intelligence, and activity, while living off of the less intelligent herds of herbivores, i.e. the dull and the
bovine. In The Genealogy of Morals, one of Nietzsche's latest works (1887), he lays this all out with great clarity and eloquence. It is a
performance that is also appalling -- and horrifying in relation to the uses to which Nietzsche's ideas were later put, for which he
cannot, and would not care to, escape blame. Recent Nietzsche enthusiasts tend to ignore Nietzsche's own solution to
the problems of modernity. Instead, they ironically take heart from the very nihilism described with horror by Nietzsche. This
nihilism is then used in the service of many other things that Nietzsche despised, like socialism, democracy, and
the valorization of the common man. Of course, when the Left demands "true" democracy, what they really want is a political
dictatorship run by themselves -- which is why Fidel Castro is still their idol. Nietzsche would not have been displeased with
the naked power of a Stalin, and possibly even would have admired the cynicism of the empty Leftist rhetoric
that he used to seize power. These ironies or paradoxes are discussed below. Before that, I will consider the embarrassing details
of Nietzsche's own solution to nihilism. First of all, Nietzsche's racism is unmistakable. The best way to approach this is to let
Nietzsche speak for himself. In the quotes that follow, I will simply offer examples from The Genealogy of Morals alone, as translated
by Francis Golffing (in the footnotes I have been adding some passages from Beyond Good and Evil for comparison). The Latin malus
["bad"] (beside which I place melas [Greek for "black"]) might designate the common man as dark, especially black-haired ("hic niger
est"), as the pre-Aryan settler of the Italian soil, notably distiguished from the new blond conqueror race by his color. At any rate, the
Gaelic presented me with an exactly analogous case: fin, as in the name Fingal, the characteristic term for nobility, eventually the
good, noble, pure, originally the fair-haired as opposed to the dark, black-haired native population. The Celts, by the way, were
definitely a fair-haired race; and it is a mistake to try to relate the area of dark-haired people found on ethnographic maps of Germany
to Celtic bloodlines, as Virchow does. These are the last vestiges of the pre-Aryan population of Germany. (The subject races are seen
to prevail once more, throughout almost all of Europe; in color, shortness of skull, perhaps also in intellectual and social instincts.
Who knows whether modern democracy, the even more fashionable anarchism, and especially that preference for the commune, the
most primitive of all social forms, which is now shared by all European socialists -- whether all these do not represent a throwback,
and whether, even physiologically, the Aryan [master] race of conquerors is not doomed?) [The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy
of Morals, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956, p.164, boldface added; note the term "master" deleted in the Golffing translation;
note]Here we have an unmistakable racism: the good, noble, and blond Aryans, contrasted with the dark and primitive
indigenes of Europe. While Nietzsche's thought is often defended as unrelated to the racism of the Nazis, there
does not seem to be much difference from the evidence of this passage. One difference might be Nietzsche's
characterization of the "commune" as "the most primitive of all social forms." Nazi ideology was totalitarian and "social," denigrating
individualism. Nietzsche would not have gone for this -- and the small, dark Hitler is certainly no Aryan -- but then many defenders of
Nietzsche these days also tend to prefer a communitarian democracy, which means they might have more in common with the Nazis,
despite their usual anti-racism, than Nietzsche himself. This is characteristic of the confusion of contemporary politics, let alone
Nietzsche apologetics. The passage above, at least, provides as much aid and comfort for the Nazis as for any other interpretation or
appropriation of Nietzsche. Nietzsche's racism might be excused as typical of its age, and criticism of it anachronistic. However, the
racism of Thomas Jefferson, a century earlier, involved an explicit denial that physical or intellectual differences between the races
(about which Jefferson expressed no certainty) compromised the rights of the inferior races. To Nietzsche, however, the "subject
races" have no "rights"; and domination, not to mention all the forms of "oppression" excoriated by the trendy
Left, are positive and desirable goods. This anxiety or distemper may be due to a variety of causes. It may result from a
crossing of races too dissimilar (or of classes too dissimilar. Class distinctions are always indicative of genetic and racial differences:
the European Weltschmerz and the pessimism of the nineteenth century were both essentially the results of an abrupt and senseless
mixing of classes)... [p.267, boldface added, note] In the litany of political sins identified by the Left, "racism, classism,
and homophobia" are the holy trinity -- with "classism," of course, as a codeword for the hated capitalism. Here we see that for
Nietzsche racism and "classism" are identical: the "subject races" form the subject classes. This is good and
noble. We also get another aspect of the matter, the "mixing" of races and classes is "senseless" and productive
of the pessimism and social problems of modern society. In these terms, Nietzsche can only have approved of the Nazis
laws against marriage or even sex between Aryans and Untermenschen. The lack of rights for the dark underclasses brings us to the
principal theme of The Genealogy of Morals: The morality of "good and evil" has been invented out of hatred and resentment by the
defeated and subjugated races, especially the Jews. People who love Nietzsche for his celebration of creativity and his
dismissal of the moralism of traditional religion, mainly meaning Christianity, usually seem to think of going
"beyond good and evil" as merely legitimizing homosexuality, drugs, abortion, prostitution, pornography, and
the other desiderata of progressive thinking. They don't seem to understand that Nietzsche wasn't particularly
interested in things like that, but, more to the point, legitimizing rape, murder, torture, pillage, domination, and
political oppression by the strong. The only honest Nietzschean graduate student I ever met frankly stated, "To be creative, you
must be evil." We get something similar in the recent Sandra Bullock movie, Murder by Numbers [2002], where the young
Nietzschean student simply says, "Freedom is crime." The story of the movie is more or less that of Leopold and Loeb, the Chicago
teenagers who in 1924 murdered a young boy (Bobby Franks) to prove that they were "beyond good and evil." Leopold and Loeb
understood their Nietzsche far better than most of his academic apologists. And we are the first to admit that anyone who knew these
"good" ones [nobility] only as enemies would find them evil enemies indeed. For these same men who, amongst themselves,
are so strictly constrained by custom, worship, ritual, gratitude, and by mutual surveillance and jealousy, who
are so resourceful in consideration, tenderness, loyality, pride and friendship, when once they step outside their
circle become little better than uncaged beasts of prey. Once abroad in the wilderness, they revel in the freedom
from social constraint and compensate for their long confinement in the quietude of their own community. They
revert to the innocence of wild animals: we can imagine them returning from an orgy of murder, arson, rape,
and torture, jubilant and at peace with themselves as though they had committed a fraternity prank -- convinced,
moreover, that the poets for a long time to come will have something to sing about and to praise. Deep within all the noble races there
lurks the [blond] beast of prey, bent on spoil and conquest. This hidden urge has to be satisfied from time to time, the beast let loose in
the wilderness. This goes as well for the Roman, Arabian, German, Japanese nobility as for the Homeric heroes and the Scandinavian
vikings. The noble races have everywhere left in their wake the catchword "barbarian." .....their utter indifference to safety and
comfort, their terrible pleasure in destruction, their taste for cruelty -- all these traits are embodied by their victims in the image of the
"barbarian," and "evil enemy," the Goth or the Vandal. The profound and icy suspicion which the German arouses as soon as he
assumes power (we see it happening again today [i.e. 1887]) harks back to the persistent horror with which Europe for many centuries
witnessed the raging of the blond Teutonic [germanischen] beast (although all racial connection between the old Teutonic tribes
[Germanen] and ourselves has been lost). [pp.174-175, boldface added, note the terms, "blond" and "German," deleted or altered in
the Golffing translation]