Altruicide

I just read Q's post about global warming. It's funny, I had spoken to a friend from New York last night, about global warming, and we arrived at a similar conclusion: if you want to stop climate change, kill yourself. The argument is unassailable; unless the person destined to solve the problem were to kill his/herself. What better way to reduce your carbon footprint than to turn yourself into fertilizer: give back to the earth!

It's a provocative idea, to consider how climate change could affect societal feelings surrounding suicide. Especially when it comes to the old and dying, the sick and incurable. There is a foreseeable loss of humanity involved, given even Neanderthals cared for their sick. But what if it isn't less human? What if it's more; closer to that ever elusive truly altruistic deed. Everyone becomes a martyr for the human race, sacrificing themselves to preserve it. It's a sort of Humanistic Enlightened Romanticism, the marriage of science, nature, and society.

Thoughts around suicide will have to change in the future, to the point of complete reversal. No longer will it be seen as selfish, damaging and misguided - it will be selfless, considerate and judicious. It will have to be. Each breath one person takes will be one less for another. Life expectancy will be cut by half, setting the new end-of-life-expectancy at around 40 years, in an effort to conserve resources and reduce the collective strain on our species. Death will be more mandatory than ever before. Perception around death will have changed a bit though. I don't think it will be viewed as bad or insuperable as it is now, because each person's passing makes it possible for us to survive longer, collectively. Life itself will become a scarce resource, one that must be guarded and fiercely protected. A long life will be akin to a long shower: wasteful and greedy. The total human population will have to shrink down to become tenable. The earth will need time to rebound. Like a coal-colored plague, man-made climate change will slash at populations rapaciously, plundering us as we have it.

Only the good die young.