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“I’m disgusted to be a human”: What to do when you hate your own species

Yes, it hurts to be human right now. That’s actually the assignment.

Your Mileage May Vary is an advice column offering you a unique framework for thinking through your moral dilemmas. It’s based on value pluralism — the idea that each of us has multiple values that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other. To submit a question, fill out this anonymous form. Here’s this week’s question from a reader, condensed and edited for clarity:

We claim to cherish the natural world. Yet every great achievement, story, and cup of coffee has done nothing for any other creature but ourselves. So when the existence of the human race is at the cost of everything else, when the hypocrisy is open and we all know... How am I supposed to look anyone in the eye or feel good about participating in a world where every human act is at the expense of the natural world that birthed us?

I’ve lost the will. I realize this sounds infantile. But the numbers are in, and I’m no longer sure what we think we’re doing as a species other than trying to create the perfect consumer, the world be damned. We’re addicted to “self,” and I’m frankly disgusted to be a human.

Dear Anti-Human Human,

Underneath the hard feelings you’re feeling — disgust, anger, loathing — are probably much softer feelings: Disappointment. Sadness. Fear about the future. It’s hard to stay with those because they make us feel vulnerable. It’s so much easier to bypass them and go straight to hate. Standing in judgment over your own kind is not exactly fun, but it does give you a feeling of moral elevation.

So I’m not surprised that, throughout history, countless people have looked at the human species and responded with a big “yuck.” As early as the 17th century BCE, we’ve projected our disgust with ourselves onto the gods, imagining that they find us so awful that a Great Flood is needed to wipe us off the face of the Earth. Only a handful of us are decent enough to be saved, for example, in an ark — Atraḥasis’s family in the Mesopotamian version of the story, Noah’s family in the Bible’s later retelling.

Since then, anti-humanism has enjoyed resurgence after resurgence. It’s often popped up at times of civilizational-scale catastrophe — from the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century to the Wars of Religion in the 17th century to the Atomic Age in the 20th century.

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And now that we’re living through a human-induced climate crisis, anti-humanism is once again in the ascendant, especially among a vocal minority of environmental activists who seem to welcome the end of destructive Homo sapiens. There’s even a Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, which advocates for us to stop having kids so that humanity will fade out and the Earth will return to good health.

You describe your own loathing for........

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