All for One and One for All
Something I recently said during a group session has been gnawing at me. In talking about the financial/money anxiety I frequently have even when I can be doing fine financially, I mentioned how my thoughts could turn to homelessness and the what-ifs of becoming so. I verbalized one of the thoughts I’ve had: People can say that homelessness is due to mental illness and drugs, but which is it: mental illness and drug seeking led to homelessness, or homelessness led to mental illness and drug seeking?
Part of what has been bothering me about my voicing that was my omission that anyone, regardless of mental health or drug status, could become and remain homeless because of our shitty economic system. (I recently watched the United Nations Security Council Meeting on AI and someone mentioned hope of AI helping with poverty, but why should we rely on AI to undo something that we (humans) have created and continue to create!?)
The other main part that has been bothering me about what I said during the group is that I felt I had “other’ed” those who are homeless. Like I felt I was saying, “I don’t want to be like those people” or be “that way.” Granted, I would think generally those who are homeless don’t want to be homeless either.
I dislike the Comparisons part of ACCEPTS, a DBT skill. Part of Comparisons is to compare yourself, your current situation, to those who are less fortunate. But they’re still suffering! How does that make it any better?
There’s a movement/belief/philosophy called Proextinctionism. The two people I’ve found who are proponents of this movement believe every sentient being needs to go extinct so there will be no suffering. It would be euthanasia. I’ve felt drawn to their idea and I might have agreed with them before. As I’ve said before, “I’m not one to see extinction in and of itself as such a terrible thing that can happen, as to me, suffering trumps death in perceived terribleness, and with extinction no one would be left behind to suffer” and “there would be no more of life’s problems because there’d be no more life.” As well, there are some parts of their message that I like, including their passion. But I don’t like how they deliver their message (Who’s going to want to listen to you if you call them morons?) and what they say seems to be very black-and-white and reliant on assumptions.
Those two proponents of this movement champion all-or-nothing ideas, namely, if even one being is suffering, that negates efforts to alleviate anyone else’s suffering. “Veganism is pointless,” they say, “because that doesn’t save every single individual.” But even if you help one being, that’s one being helped. Even if the ultimate goal is overcoming all suffering, there can be the process along the way of helping what individuals we currently can rather than thinking it pointless if we don’t help them all at once. As well, their idea assumes we know everything about consciousness and death (like whether death is actually a permanent end). They say extinction is the only way to eliminate suffering. How can we be sure of this, and how can we be sure that it is even a way? What if, for example, parallel realities actually exist and there’s a reality in which we’ve already tried extinctionism? What if death isn’t the end? What if life begins again?
I think it’s also interesting how they condemn spirituality when what they’re saying to me seems inherently spiritual. It resembles the concept of we’re all one: even if one of us is hurting, that means we’re all hurting, that even if some of us are fine (e.g., not homeless), there are those of us who aren’t fine. “None of us until all of us.” I’ve agreed with that and can think something needs to change when our status quo is so detrimental.
In my focus on being independent, I’ve dismissed or failed to see what support I do have, as recent events have highlighted for me. So I think that’s something to appreciate. While gratitude can seem like a double-edged sword (Sure maybe I’m fine but not everyone is.), on the road to alleviate suffering, every individual counts–that means not only that individual’s suffering, but that individual’s well-being and alleviation of their suffering.
More on Suffering and Extinction
From a post I drafted in October 2022 but never published:
So what if humans go extinct? I don’t see all life dying out as a problem—in fact, there would be no more of life’s problems because there’d be no more life. What is a concern is life somehow arising again.
If humans or all life died out, there would be fewer to no traces of the past, of what has already been done and what that had led to. Thus what creatures that arise, specifically human-like creatures, could be doomed to repeat similar mistakes, the same or similar actions that yielded so much suffering.
So, what if death isn’t the end, and what if life keeps coming back? I think it’s delusional to fear the end of it all when you wouldn’t be conscious of that fact. I think it makes more sense to dread life going on and on or repeatedly happening, and the suffering going on and on with it.
And that dread being reason for my “Eterni-phobia.” A few months after the unpublished draft, I wrote,
One can consider that we’re so conditioned to the existence of suffering that we can’t imagine life/existence any other way (much like our current economic system). One can further consider that life/existence could be something different, could become something so much better in a way that is currently unfathomable to us. It can be argued that such won’t be achieved in this lifetime due to existential threats, but even if current life goes extinct, there’s no guarantee that life won’t come back. And there’s likely so much about life/existence that we still don’t know or understand.
Sure, life as we currently know it consists of suffering, but the key phrase is “as we currently know it.”
Currently Untitled 