One Life Materialism | Peter Banks

We stand on the precipice of eternity or silence. No crime could carry the moral weight of cowardly accepting silence.

We stand on the precipice of eternity or silence. No crime could carry the moral weight of cowardly accepting silence. In order to pass a great Weighing of Souls we must stand straight and strong in the pursuit of eternity. I have accepted as my religion the weight of future generations. I search not for immortality or utopia but instead to build amongst the chaotic and untamed matter of the stars a habitat fit for consciousness. To accept this as your God means to frame every action as moral in so much as it increases the probability of the long run survival of consciousness and immoral the degree to which it obstructs this goal. Let it be for future generations to decide what the real purpose of Man is. But that is not our privilege. Not until every corner of the Universe teems and dances with life can we set down this burden. This is a task which cannot be accomplished by any single human or generation of humans. Its goals require uncountable generations taking their own modest step towards the beginning of infinity. It requires the mustering of resources on a scale we cannot begin to imagine. Thus we must construct a theocracy whose religion is our survival and whose God is life itself.

The frictions of an increasingly diverse world have rubbed off into indifference to the point that very few people I know really believe in anything. Modern industrial life is reliant on increasing atomization and cogification of human life. Values like nationalism, religiosity, family loyalty, or love are all impediments to the ability of people to economically contribute. Despite the apparent expansion of cultural acceptance, this is simply a veneer. Modern society cares not what food you eat, who you sleep with, or what color your skin is. But it requires a degree of self control and deep assimilation to the values of capitalism which would stun the vast majority of our ancestors. 

As the cultural edifices of our society have each been shown to ring hollow, Western man has turned to a new metaphysics. Something I refer to as “one life materialism”. In its most succinct form this is the belief in two axioms.
 

1. The Material world is all that exists. 

2. Death is final.

Despite the apparent simplicity of these beliefs they represent a marked shift from any other metaphysics – in the Western tradition, which is extremely young – and their result has been catastrophic on human behavior. This is amplified by the extremely high probability they are true, meaning unlike other metaphysics they are open to constant criticism and tend to emerge stronger than they were before. 

This essay is in my mind the most important one I have written thus far. In fact every essay I have and will write can be thought of as a distillation of the points I’m making here. One life materialism has led to us leading increasingly hollow lives almost completely devoid of any purpose beyond Epicureanism. We must reject this without embracing delusion or lies. The Universe is purpose enough. 

Nature

I grew up in a Mormon family and was from a young age deeply inoculated with a belief in both the necessity and the inherent value of biological reproduction. What routinely shocks me is the degree to which basically no one my age shares this belief. Even people for whom I share a deep admiration will casually mention they have no interest in having kids and those who are interested are basically totally unwilling to alter their life in any way to make it possible. The stated reason is almost always 1) a hesitation to renounce the freedoms of being childless, 2) a belief they cannot afford it, or 3) a fear that their children would effectively not be worthy of life. It is not my place to insist that people who do not want kids have them but this is inherently tragic because to me at least all of these are simply bad arguments. 

1. Although I know having a kid will involve significant restrictions on the things I can do, so does everything worth doing; for example being in a monogamous relationship – something I will write about soon – involves renouncing the ability to sleep with others. We could all live like Andrew Huberman but that is inherently an empty life. It is our constraints that give life shape and purpose, in particular those constraints we choose to embrace.
   
   

2. Nearly every American can afford children. Resistance to this takes the shape of a Motte and Bailey argument where if pushed people will concede they could in fact afford children but that it would require significant financial sacrifices. Effectively what people mean when they say they cannot afford children is that they could not continue the consumption patterns to which they have become accustomed if they had kids. But what standard is that really? Mechanically how could people ever afford children under that criteria? Since the household is larger but the number of adults remains unchanged?
   
   The alternative argument is that parents will not have enough money to give their kids the experiences they want to. Again, this is fully within your rights to believe but how many of you would choose to not exist if given the lifestyle you could offer your own kids? Obviously being able to do things like afford piano lessons for your children is amazing and should be celebrated, but just as I think it would be horrifying to argue that people in the developing world should just totally stop having kids because their quality of life would be lower than a Norwegian, I don’t think lower class Americans should simply refuse to have children. Life is struggle and necessity, rejecting that is rejecting life.
   
   

3. Finally, people tend to view their future children as not worth the squeeze for a wide variety of reasons but these largely fall into two categories; either a belief that Human life is inherently cancerous and thus should at minimum be reduced to the point it can live in Harmony with Nature or that the individuals themselves have biological or psychological conditions which they are fearful of passing on. I write about why I believe human life is valuable inherently in my prior essay so if you want to hear more of my thoughts on that I recommend you read it here. But in its simplest form anyone who has chosen to not kill themselves – the only real right we have – is making a statement about the value of their life; that it is superior to silence. I believe this should extend to your – potential – children as well.
   
   Additionally, Humans have without a doubt reshaped the world, sometimes for better but often for worse. There is a certain Western centrism that is popular across the world but wherever Humans set foot we permanently altered the environment. In New Zealand for example you can see the collapse of MegaFauna following the arrival of Humans in the 14th century. At its core though without Humans life on Earth WILL die, and will die relatively soon. Estimates based exclusively on Solar expansion – thus ruling out any other non-Human disaster – estimate the Earth has 500 million years left before photosynthesis becomes impossible.

At its core in all these arguments is a shared theme that people should only have children if it makes their life “better”. But that isn’t why we have kids; of course it will make your life more difficult. We have children because it is what we are designed to do. We are each the inheritors of a pedigree stretching back billions of years. To reject this and choose to voluntarily embrace oblivion is only possible if you totally disregard the sacrifices of your ancestors – something I refuse to do.

Beyond this I have discovered in the brief time I have been alive that real meaning is found in fulfilling those roles life has set before you. I was born a Human and the ultimate standard against which I am judged is my ability to live as such. This means embracing my instincts – including the desire to have a family – as something of an internal compass. Whatever I may wish, this is the role I have been assigned by Nature.All I can do is fulfill it to the utmost.
 

The Future

One life materialism is inherently a belief that the future will not exist – for you – and thus it encourages actions which reflect this. Every institution across America is designed to burn through whatever surplus it has as aggressively as it can. This is something I will write about more in the future in particular as it relates to the news media but people are willing to bankrupt the State and destroy the environment simply because they know the consequences of these actions will not exist for them. Every form of modern social organization from totalitarian communism to liberal democracy exists to cater exclusively to those people already alive. Compare simply the amount we spend on social programs for just the old like Social Security and Medicare($2.2T in total and ~$6,600per person) with the amount we spend on NASA($25B in total and ~$75 per person) or the EPA($11B in total and ~$33 per person). America is an outlier in this regard with how little we spend on social programs and how much we spend on NASA so these numbers are a lower bound for Western countries. Only an ideology which places zero weight on the value of future humans could do this. 

None of this should be taken as evidence I believe that social programs should be slashed – in fact the extreme opposite – but simply that there is a temporal coordination game going on right now and we are failing at it. Current generations are borrowing against the Future in an attempt to create an unsustainable standard of living. The solution is not to fade into poverty but instead to staunchly insist on progress, progress no one reading this article will ever benefit from but whose cost we will all foot. If all we did was spend 3% of our GDP on space exploration – less than the US spends on the military – we would settle the stars in a galactic heart beat. 

Tying this to the previous section, it is constantly remarkable to me the degree to which people are unwilling to make the simplest sacrifice for their ideology. Consider White Nationalists in the West who fear a collapse of the traditional White majority in North America and Europe along with the general decline of the White race. Their fear becomes almost comical when you realize the only change that would be needed to enshrine a permanent White majority would be to bring the average fertility rate up to three. A number which by historical standards is quite low, but one that very few of the most extreme White Nationalists are capable of attaining. There is very little celebration of human fertility in Far-Right spaces online because fundamentally they don’t care about the future of White people, they are simply uncomfortable with being around non-Whites right now. 

The obvious counter argument to everything I’ve said thus far is the degree to which many young people care about the climate. Polls show robust majorities of people place climate risk – ostensibly something beyond your own life – as one of the most pressing issues of our time. But this is not the counter argument defenders think it is. First, poll after poll shows that people simply want others to pay and would accept almost zero cost if it was imposed on them. For example researchers at the University of Chicago found that only 38% of people would be willing to pay $1 a month to combat climate change. Second, simply listen to the words of climate activists such as Greta Thunberg. Almost no time is spent on the effects in centuries; everything is about people alive today – or at most the grandchildren of those alive today – and how the world will change within our lifetime. Even if this simply reflects a marketing drive to get people to care, isn’t that exactly what I’m saying? To see this in stark action simply look at the climate projections of a place like the UN. Almost all of their projections conclude in 2100 with many concluding as early as 2050. This is in spite of the fact that the accelerating pace of climate change, and environmental degradation more generally, will have a much larger impact in the 22nd century than the 21st. But since there are many people alive today who will live to see 2100 and zero who will live to see 2200 our warnings are catered to those years. 

Indifference

One life materialism is almost synonymous with nihilism. Which has been rising since the early 20th century. Liberalism has so clearly dominated ethically and economically that there is nothing left but to choose oppression and poverty or atomization and alienation. In addition, as society has become more diverse, and increasingly as the internet has increased the ability to communicate, the sacred beliefs of the West – which alone had not been crushed and discredited by colonial conquest – have come under increasing attack – something I write about here. In work places or communities where people have incompatible world views you have two choices. You either face constant tension and conflict or a sort of corporatized and sanitized pacificity. Who really feels comfortable expressing their views? How many religious people reading this would be comfortable telling coworkers of another faith they will burn in hell? Who would be willing to risk any punishment from their employer to express a political or cultural opinion? Even when writing this in a country with strong free speech protections there is always a part of myself that questions the sanity of my choice to write. Wouldn’t it be better to simply accept a quiet peaceful life? Where through strategic ambiguity everyone I know suitably thinks we agree on all important topics. In America outside of online freaks no one really believes anything enough to argue and when disagreement emerges it tends to show up in cathartic spasmodic releases which have no clear objective.

Parents are hesitant to teach their children what they really believe for fear they will repeat it at school and the parent will be forced to defend it. Voters refuse to admit to each other their true political preferences for fear that someone might disagree or be offended. Peace is only possible when there is nothing worth fighting for. And for the vast majority of us we simply don’t think almost anything matters enough for the juice to be worth the squeeze.

Hope

We are not doomed. We are biological creatures and the current social organization simply does not serve many of our needs which has led to people embracing a nihilistic view on life. This is not the first time something like this has occurred in human history – nor will it be the last. But we are not out of the valley of the shadow of death and the next centuries will be a trial of fire like nothing we have faced and nothing we will ever face as a species again. What is different now is how powerful we are, the scale of our destruction – and potential destruction – is unique in Human history.  Despite how the popular aphorism goes regarding being born too early and too late we are in the most decisive moment in human history and indifference is impossible. I thus suggest we add a third axiom,

3. The future matters. 

Everything else flows from here. Once you accept the weight of future generations you cannot simply close your eyes to our problems and insist that since you will not be alive for them they do not matter. When I consider O’Niel cylinders full of Humans scattered across the inky void of space the scale of the Future overwhelms me. Even if each of these lives is worth just a billionth of our own to risk them would be a crime of unimaginable proportions. If the government is aware of Aliens and choosing to hide them they have committed an act of such unimaginable evil by endangering Human life that every institution that exists should be cast down in a righteous rage. I see no indication of this though. Instead we must simply steward this tiny Arc until we have the strength to embed ourselves permanently in reality. This means building a better, more just, and more sustainable world today. But it also means embracing what we are and what we are not. We are a part of a delicate and beautiful theoretic dance and cannot simply decide the show is not for us. Life matters too much. We matter too much to let cowardice or indifference doom Earth’s last best hope.