Hopelessness and Nihilism.

Out of Place and Out of Time. When people begin to see themselves as morally equal to or lower than animals, a certain inevitable depressive world outlook must result. After all, if we are not the supreme creation of God, then we are a cancer. If we do not occupy a privileged place on this earth, we occupy the lowest rung of existence because we cause more damage than any other species. If we desire to escape responsibility in sexual and other matters, we may assuage our consciences by accepting culpability for 'destroying' our planet -- a psychological ploy called "substitution" that allows us to take no concrete action other than being politically correct in our speech.

Despairing Statements. The attitude of "man as disease" is reflected in many statements made by animal rights activists such as Ingrid Newkirk, who once said that "We [humans] have grown like a cancer. We're the biggest blight on the face of the earth." Although not an activist by any means, even Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once remarked that "I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand."

Some environmentalists even wish for death -- not only for themselves, but for the entire human race. For them, the world is an unending circus of horrors, to be endured and survived until the blessed release that is afforded by the end of their lives.

Bill McKibben writes in The End of Nature that "We are not interested in the utility of a particular species or free-flowing river, or ecosystem, to mankind. They have intrinsic value, more value to me than another human body, or a billion of them. Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet ... Somewhere along the line -- at about a billion years ago, maybe half that -- we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the earth ... Until such time as homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along."

Vehemently Yours. Perhaps the most extreme statement of this nihilistic philosophy was made by what has to be the world's ultimate anti- life group -- The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, or VHEMT, pronounced "vehement" for short.

Anti-people crusader Les U. Knight, Portland, Oregon substitute teacher and founder of VHEMT, said in his newsletter These Exit Times , that "The hopeful alternative to the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals is the voluntary extinction of one species: Homo sapiens -- us ... When every human makes the moral choice to live long and die out, Earth will be allowed to return to its former glory. Each time another one of us decides not to add another one of us to the burgeoning billions already squatting on this ravaged planet, another ray of hope shines through the gloom ... No matter what you're doing to improve life on planet Earth, I think you'll find that phasing out the human race will increase your chance of success." [12]

Knight seems not to notice that people will have a hard time 'improving life on planet Earth' if there are no people left to do the work!

The Roots. Dr. Frederick Goodwin of the United States Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration struck at the root of such a hopeless Weltanschauung (world outlook) when he said that "At its core, the animal-rights thesis is a degradation of what it means to be human. As a psychiatrist, I see in that a kind of giving up on the human endeavor, a sense of hopelessness and despair."

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