EDITORIAL

Given the interminable hiatus since our last issue, the urgent questions are presumably "Why aren't you dead yet?" and since we're apparently very much alive, "What were you doing all this time?" Regarding the first question we reiterate (for the umpteenth time) that the only thing we've all signed up for is non-procreation. All else (including but not limited to suicide, abortion, cannibalism, sodomy, dental hygiene, etc.) was, is, and will remain strictly optional. In other words, we'll die when, where and how we feel like it, assuming we're fortunate enough to have a say in the matter. Hence the "voluntary" in "voluntary population reduction."

Regarding the second question, the simple answer is "working for the man every night and day." It was unreasonable to expect that founding the world's first antihuman religion would be lucrative. Gentrification happened, bitches had to work, and free time was scarce. But it wasn't a total loss! Mad programming skills were learned on the job, and subsequently applied to modernizing and enhancing the Reverend's unique polymeter MIDI sequencer. This lengthy process resulted in a new album of polymeter electronic dance music, titled "Akoko Ajeji" (Yoruba for "Strange Time") and slated for release later this year. Other music is also forthcoming, including a new Church of Euthanasia anthem called "A Thin Layer of Oily Rock." The anthem shares its name and concept with a climate change presentation the Reverend gave on August 10, 2018 at Gallery Spektrum in Berlin, to a largely hostile audience of neo-Marxists.

"A Thin Layer of Oily Rock" is an expression of the new post-antihuman Church of Euthanasia, in which humans are to be pitied rather than hated, not only because we'll be the primary victims of our self-defeating civilization, but also because our civilization is what makes us so interesting and worth saving. This paradoxical ideology evolved from an epic multiyear argument between the Reverend and UNAPACK founder Lydia Eccles over the specialness of scientific knowledge. The argument was formalized on a blog called Metadelusion, in an attempt to make it less rancorous, but the attempted de-escalation failed. As Marshall McLuhan would surely have predicted, rhetoric only became more inflamed, due to blogging being a "hot" medium that facilitates ranting and thereby ratchets up vitriol rather than defusing it. Acrimony notwithstanding, Metadelusion is an inspired work, and excerpts from it are reprinted in this issue.

Meanwhile the elephant in the room is that during the Church of Euthanasia's twenty-seven years of existence, the human population has increased by roughly a quarter (more than one and a half billion), with no end in sight. This is no failure on our part; on the contrary, we predicted relentless population growth, along with climate chaos, death of the oceans, destruction of the rainforests, and much else. We abstain from procreating because it's righteous, not because it's likely to save us from extinction. We often hear astonishment that that our predictions were so uncannily accurate, but we refrain from gloating. Schadenfreude is for trolls and smug bastards.

And what's next? We've enjoyed lampooning transhumanists over the years, but it must be admitted that our old arch-enemy Ray Kurzweil might turn out to be right about the singularity, at least in the narrow sense of everything changing exponentially at once. The nasty thing about exponential change is that sooner or later you arrive at an impossible near-vertical acceleration, like a brick wall stretching up to infinity. That's where we are now. There's no precise inflection point, but almost imperceptibly it dawns on us that it's no longer a question of avoiding a collision, or even of slowing down; that we're spinning out of control, and tumbling over the guardrail into a painful and unthinkable future. The robots might rise up and euthanize us before we do too much more damage, bless their silicon hearts, but don't count on it.

 index #5  ·  next