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Extinction On My Mind /8:
First Wave

My acceptance of the inevitability of the end of our species and the end of my own life are two different things

By Randi Hacker

January 20, 2025

There are times when I ask myself if I’m conflating my own approaching death with the whole human extinction thing, which, what with things like Trump’s offer of $1 billion expedited and indifferent environmental permits and some pretty shameful lawsuit hanky-panky, is continuing apace.

I mean, it’s not as if there isn’t any overlap. There is. Obviously (See Fig.1).

Descartes graph extinction

Fig. 1. That’s Descartes fading away there.

But I’m not. My acceptance of the inevitability of the end of our species and my acceptance of the end of my own life are two different things. I view the end of my life with the same kind of disbelief that I have to think all humans have felt since we first understood our own mortality and invented religion.

I view the end of human life with a sense of liberation and clarity and hope: liberation from the weight of thirty-six years of thinking it was incumbent upon me to save the world; hope that our planet will be able to recover once we’re no longer around to continue our assault; and clarity that the Earth is not humans’ own. Never has been. I imagine that future lifeforms will feel they have just as much claim on this planet as we do now, as I imagine our ancestors did maybe all the way back to those single-celled organisms floating in the warm, rich waters of the primordial sea.

Still, my death and extinction have, in fact, achieved singularity. Because, though I will certainly die before humans die out altogether, I will still be a part of the great Sixth Extinction. And when it comes to extinction, no one dies alone; we all die together. And (asteroid aside), by “together,” I don’t mean all at once; I mean we will all be gone. Eventually. Even Scientific American concedes that it’s not so much a question of if as it is a question of how and when. At some undetermined point in the future, all humans will have been translated to the next frequency.

All of us.

Together.

That’s what extinction is.

But at this point, in the here and now, I and all of my contemporaries are in the vanguard; we are hanging ten on the First Wave of the Sixth Extinction. I can’t be the only one who thinks this carries quite a lot of cachet, can I?

Because (asteroid aside, again), our extinction will certainly come in waves, wave after wave after wave, because we’re not that easy to get rid of and because there are a lot of us and because we cling.

Nevertheless….

Even Scientific American concedes that it’s not so much a question of if as it is a question of how and when. At some undetermined point in the future, all humans will have been translated to the next frequency.

Each wave will have a name; and the waves will be named by academics and scientists and influencers; and the waves will be studied and written about and analyzed. Long PhD dissertations will be written on tiny aspects of them. There will be grants and documentaries and possibly even awards. Because there’s nothing we like better to study than ourselves. Viewed in the proper light, our extinction provides us with the perfect opportunity to do just that. Obsessively.

You know, I’ve written a novella. It’s called Extinction for Beginners. And in chapter four, the main character, Ellie, has a discussion about waves of extinction and academia and grants with her best friend, Dee.

The phone rings. Ellie picks up. It’s Dee.

“I’m done texting,” she says. “Tell me your thought.”

“Our extinction will come in waves, and each wave will be named,” says Ellie.

“Who will name these waves?” asks Dee.

“Why, the surviving anthropologists, of course,” says Ellie.

“And then,” says Dee, “there will be a feud in academia because the surviving sociologists will claim the right to name the waves of extinction belongs to their department, not Anthropology.”

“Emails will be exchanged,” says Ellie. “Heated at times.”

“Communications and Marketing will get involved,” says Dee. “A board of ethics will be convened using expensive outside consultants.”

“In the end,” says Ellie, “a new chair will be endowed whose only job will be to oversee the naming of all of the waves of extinction.”

“Applications invited,” says Dee.

They laugh a little mirthlessly.

“Unless,” says Ellie, “unless we all go extinct before that has time to happen.”

First Wave button“We can only hope,” says Dee.

This time they laugh mirthfully.

Personally, I vote for numbering the waves. Maybe I’ll have a First Wave button made, using a sophisticated typeface. Or maybe I’ll get a tattoo in cursive. Or maybe I won’t get anything at all and, instead, I’ll just hold the thought in my heart and remind myself of it when I catch a glimpse of the moon between the branches of that big tree that grows in my neighbor’s backyard. Or stop to touch some pussy willows that appeared in December. Or read the headlines. Obviously.

 

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of WestmountMag.ca or its publishers.

Feature image: Travis Rupert, Pexels

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Randi HackerRandi Hacker has been a writer and editor since the 20th century, and she’s been writing about the environment for more than thirty years, mostly to empower young people to take agency in their future. Satirical essays written with a partner appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Punch and Spy, among other publications. Her YA novel, Life As I Knew It, (Simon & Schuster) was named one of the Books for the Teen Age by the NY Public Library, and her TV show, Windy Acres, written with Jay Craven, was nominated for a New England Emmy for Writing. She just retired from her position as the resolutions copy editor for the State of Vermont, a job that has forever damaged her relationship with the comma. randihacker.com



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