What Is Efilism? Should You Be an Antinatalist? How Are the TESCREAL Ideologies Pro-Extinctionist?

I’ve been meaning to post about my podcast Dystopia Now, which I started with the incredibly talented comedian Kate Willett back in February. We cover a range of “fun” topics like neoliberalism, the Abundance Agenda, ethics of human extinction, reckless race to build an AI God, and fantastical ideologies of Silicon Valley utopians—and, of course, we discuss amusing tidbits like this article from Bryan Johnson, a transhumanist who plans on living forever:

The most recent episode features Briahna Joy Gray, a well-known—and sometimes controversial!—political commentator who was the National Press Secretary for Bernie Sanders’ campaign in 2020. She joins Kate and me in exploring a bizarre and dangerous new ideology called Efilism, which explicitly aims to exterminate all life on Earth—including humanity. It’s been in the news recently because an Efilist built a home-made bomb, drove up to a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, and detonated it, killing himself and injuring four others.

We also discuss antinatalism, upon which Efilism is founded, as well as the ways in which the TESCREAL bundle of ideologies is also pro-extinctionist—a topic that I’ve been screaming about at higher decibel levels over the past few years. I wrote about this very topic in my latest article for Truthdig: “A Tale of Two Extinctions.”

You can check out the episode here, if you’re curious: https://www.patreon.com/posts/pro-natalism-and-131912678. We’ll be re-releasing a bunch of the episodes as videos on YouTube, and a friend of mine is also putting together transcripts of all the episodes. I’ll keep everyone in the loop as things develop. :-)

I hope everyone is well—the news lately has been quite disturbing. The current global predicament, or what the Club of Rome would call the “world problematique” (i.e., “the interrelated cultural, political, and environmental conflicts that threatened humanity”), makes the “doomsday hypothesis” explanation of the Fermi paradox look increasingly probable. Perhaps there’s just something about reaching our current level of global “development” that leads to catastrophic collapse. From climate change to biodiversity loss to environmental toxins to geopolitical instabilities to fascism to nuclear proliferation to AI deepfakes and social media disinformation … It’s all quite unsettling, and if that’s the way you feel, you should know that you’re not alone!