The eponymous question sounds weirdly familiar to me. Since I agree with the author that we live in "unbearable times", I started some time ago to find peace with it in acceptance: I'm not going to mourn humans as a species, because they are bringing extinction upon themselves and causing immeasurable pain and misery to so many other animals. The thought that our planet - Gaia - will not only survive humans, but may even thrive without us, gives me a strange comfort.

Here the author takes a slightly different approach and tries to weigh the morality of this question. He looks at many angles and refers to many thinkers, from classical to modern. For a philosophy book, it is very straightforward and easy to read, while offering a lot of food for thought.

Thanks to the publisher, Crown Publishing, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

This was a good, philosophical work of nonfiction. Very short and easy to digest, which is nice sometimes as a reader. I read it in one sitting. I'm not sure this would sway anyone to believe any certain opinion, but was an interesting read as someone who is concerned with humanity's impact on the earth and whether or not it's really ethical to have children and keep the population growing and growing and growing.

Should humanity continue to exist is the question posed by Should We Go Extinct. It focuses on key areas such as factory farming, climate change, and whether there is anything innately valuable about us. It uses the lens of philosophy to explore various questions and answers. I don't always agree with the conclusions the author, Todd May, arrives at but I appreciate the questions. May shows his work and I enjoy seeing how he arrives at the answers he gives. Thank you to the author, Crown Publishing, and NetGalley for the eARC.

This can be a rough book to read, we don't like thinking about whether the world would be a better place without us. And yet, there are important questions to ask and in exploring possible answers, we might find ourselves challenged to be better stewards. Philosophy is not my main focus of study so I learned a great deal reading Should We Go Extinct. I made notes of other books to read and people to look up. It was fascinating to watch May use philosophy to draw conclusions. If you are at all interested in the question of whether humanity is a net good or not, I highly recommend this exploration of the topic.

The title and subtitle say it all.

Taking the very long view, of course we will go extinct, because all species eventually do. This even though we're a weed species, proliferating wildly in all sorts of habitats and crowding out other life forms. But on a humanly appreciable time scale, the practical question whether we should go extinct is moot -- either we will, because we've rendered this planet uninhabitable by carbon-based life forms and haven't mastered the science of terraforming so been unable to decamp to Mars or wherever; or we won't. (My money's on "won't": see "weed species," above.)

As for the moral question, Todd May takes it up from several angles. Humans are mostly more happy than not, or at least there's a case to be made that enough of us experience our lives as more happy than not to argue that the (admittedly not measurable) amount of happiness in the world is increased by the presence of humans. Though what happens, May asks, if inequality becomes even more grotesque than it already is, so happiness is possible for only a very few people?

What about creative work -- art, literature, music? Some nonhuman animals come close to making creative work, but mostly it's only us who make and appreciate it. May thinks it would be tragic if there weren't any humans left to make or engage with art; I can't say I agree with him on that point, because what does "tragedy" mean if no one's feeling it? Still, I admit it makes me sad to think of no one reading or looking at pictures or making quilts or listening to Florence & the Machine anymore.

What, May asks, about the suffering we bring to animals in factory farms and research labs? (The descriptions here of factory-farm conditions are brief but harrowing.) What about the destruction of ecosystems? And so on. Along the way, he presents a number of other philosophers' perspectives on the values he's concerned with, agreeing with some and disputing others. I don't know enough to decide whether he's "right," but for the most part I agree with his views.

May doesn't come down on either side of the question posed by his title. What he does conclude is that it's a live question: that is to say, we humans do so much harm as to make it reasonable to wonder whether maybe we shouldn't be around. So, he concludes, we had better take action that will weight the scale in our favor by making us less inimical to each other and to the other lives on our planet. Less factory meat, less economic inequality, a population stabilizing at a smaller number (equality for women is crucial here, as he and others have pointed out), a crash program to put the brakes on our climate catastrophe ...

How these things are to be accomplished, May doesn't say. I don't criticize him for that -- it would be to criticize this book for not being some other book, i.e. a practical guide to planet rescue, and I agree with him about what steps might make our species worth the preserving. Having said that, I was left thinking how unlikely it is that we'll take those steps. And then thinking that if we don't take them, we really are a plague on this planet. And that if we really are a plague on this planet, well ...

At least Todd May is always worth reading.

Many thanks to Crown Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC.

Yes!

As a big fan of the environmental King himself, Thanos, that's my take away from the question: "Should We Go Extinct".
The author goes about asking if the elimination of the human "species would bring about a better outcome than our continuing to propagate and exist"? He includes many examples of how humans are ruining the planet alongside reasons we "improve" the planet. I found the improvements all to benefit only humans though ("Wouldn't the world be impoverished without the experiences of creating and appreciating beauty, truth, and the possibilities of a good life?"). If humans weren't around, these things wouldn't be missed and animals would go about enjoying their homes sans deforestation and pollution. He also states that "the world would become a bit hollowed out; it would lose some of its richness" but I think only in the human sense. It would gain so much more without.

Despite my feelings on this, I feel the author left it open to the reader to decide their own feelings. He lays out the information in a clear concise way and leaves it open. He concludes that there are reasons on both sides of the argument and if we are to remain on this planet we need to make changes to minimize our harm and destruction of the environment and other animals. All in all I enjoyed it.

3.75 Stars

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book for my honest review.

This is a short book (treatise?) exploring the topic of human extinction, more specifically exploring the question of whether we should let humanity go extinct. I thought some interesting ideas and philosophies were explored. I am a parent of thoughtful and hard-working teenagers who I think (and hope) will make a positive impact on those around them. So while, I was interested to read these ideas, I am also prone to be against human extinction for the time being. I received digital ARC of this book through NetGalley.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publish Crown Publishing for an advanced copy of a book that asks a difficult question, one that will get a variety of answers based on political, emotional or religious thoughts, which might be part of the problem.

I work with a lot of young people, mostly part-timers, college students, or young adults who thought English degrees were a good idea. The one thing I have noticed is that none of them really think that there is much of a future. This came on me slowly, when I noticed no one was really talking about having families, settling down, getting real jobs, that kind of stuff people my age bored me with at their age. Most of their talk is about student loans, climate change, the loss of laws their grandmothers had. Never children. Never futures. My nephew who is thirteen now, once told me after a school lockdown drill "You adults really messed things up." While flattered he thought I was adult, I had to agree. We adults really messed things up. And continue to mess things up. And I don't think this is going to change. Todd May poses a question in his book, that I think many would argue with, for and against. Should We Go Extinct? is a small book, that asks a philosophical question of its reader, with reasons for and against the continuance of the human race.

This is a question that probably wakes up quite a few people, or occurs to us while watching the news or doom scrolling through twitter. Is it fair to bring life onto this planet? Not just the fact that childbirth costs a lot, support systems for new parents have dried up, and health care for pregnant women and newborns are really in flux due to laws written by non-doctors. Add to this the fear of nuclear war, the fact that climate change is here, and is probably only going to get worse, and well one does wonder. As the population grows, and the climate changes, water will become a precious resource, and land will need to be given over to corporate farms, which in itself offer miserable conditions to animals, and those that have to take care of it. May is not all negative, May discusses the arts, the things that only humans can create, and only humans might enjoy. May also offers different ways of thinking, and dealing with parts of our capitalist system, that could help us in the future.

This is a book that has no real answer, but does ask of readers to look, to really look at the world, not through the glasses of ideology, or religion, but as humans and say what have we done, and what can we do. May does a good job of trying to walk the center line, but to me at least I don't see anything really changing. Call it the retail experience in me. Working retail shows humans at their worse, and if not finding a coupon on a phone is enough to have a person explode, telling them about corporate farms or taking a bus and not a Ford pickup, well that is not going to go well.

I enjoyed this book, which is odd to say about extinction level event books. I liked the presentation, the question, and the many bits about the world I didn't know about. This is a real book, with a real question, but I don't know if anyone is really listening.

Todd May is one of my favorite scholars of philosophy working today. I'd put him on par with Peter Singer in terms of contemporary relevance. Ultimately, May is optimistic that the answer to the titular question is "No." As a parent of two young children, I want to agree, however - considering the harm humans have wrought upon the planet - I find myself reminded of Agent Smith's famous quote from the movie "The Matrix": that humans are "a virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure." Professor May, I wish I were as hopeful as you. Regardless, it's an excellent, thought-provoking read.