same animal. What McKayla Maroney did in 2012 would have been
considered superhuman in the fifties. Parkour, a sport derived from French
military obstacle course training, is amazing, as is free running. I watch
compilations of such performances with unabashed admiration. Some of the
kids jump off three-storey buildings without injury. It’s dangerous—and
amazing. Crane climbers are so brave it rattles the mind. The same goes for
extreme mountain bikers, freestyle snowboarders, surfers of fifty-foot waves,
and skateboarders.
The boys who shot up Columbine High School, whom we discussed
earlier, had appointed themselves judges of the human race—like the TEDx
professor, although much more extreme; like Chris, my doomed friend. For
Eric Harris, the more literate of the two killers, human beings were a failed
and corrupt species. Once a presupposition such as that is accepted, its inner
logic will inevitably manifest itself. If something is a plague, as David
Attenborough has it,^170 or a cancer, as the Club of Rome claimed,^171 the
person who eradicates it is a hero—a veritable planetary saviour, in this case.
A real messiah might follow through with his rigorous moral logic, and
eliminate himself, as well. This is what mass murderers, driven by near-
infinite resentment, typically do. Even their own Being does not justify the
existence of humanity. In fact, they kill themselves precisely to demonstrate
the purity of their commitment to annihilation. No one in the modern world
may without objection express the opinion that existence would be bettered
by the absence of Jews, blacks, Muslims, or Englishmen. Why, then, is it
virtuous to propose that the planet might be better off, if there were fewer
people on it? I can’t help but see a skeletal, grinning face, gleeful at the
possibility of the apocalypse, hiding not so very far behind such statements.
And why does it so often seem to be the very people standing so visibly
against prejudice who so often appear to feel obligated to denounce humanity
itself?
I have seen university students, particularly those in the humanities, suffer
genuine declines in their mental health from being philosophically berated by
such defenders of the planet for their existence as members of the human
species. It’s worse, I think, for young men. As privileged beneficiaries of the
patriarchy, their accomplishments are considered unearned. As possible
adherents of rape culture, they’re sexually suspect. Their ambitions make