Extinctionists versus Expansionists
It really is that simple, isn't it?
It was late in the evening, I was scrolling Twitter or X or whatever we are now calling it (personally, I think Elon is having cold feet after an enduring branding problem and is eventually going to revert to Twitter as the product name and X as the parent company name, but I digress…)
Anyway, my half-asleep brain brain caught this tweet from Elon, wherein he boils down the challenge of the two opposing sides we currently face as ultimately a battle between “Extinctionists” and “Expansionists”.
The Extinctionists
Building on the concept of the “woke mind virus” that he’s previously tweeted about the perils of, Elon went on to describe how the ‘Extinctionists’ are those who “want a holocaust for all humanity” — meaning, presumably, those for whom the world is too far gone to save.
They are those who feel that climate change is an existential threat that cannot be solved (though, ironically, they love the idea of legislating every single bit of human life around trying in vain to stop its inevitable progression), those who believe that having children is irresponsible (and who oftentimes themselves are too irresponsible to take on the responsibilities and sacrifices required of parenting).
They are the ‘Stop Oil’ people blocking the highway, the ‘Eat the Rich’ disillusioned. It’s no coincidence that the traffic-blocking environmental movement calls itself “Extinction Rebellion.”
In short, Extinctionists are the nihilists in today’s society.
The Expansionists
On the other hand, according to Elon, we have the ‘Expansionists’, of which he is presumably himself a member. The Expansionists, rather than hating humanity and accepting its defeat, see the potential of humanity to flourish yet. They wish to invest in humanity and see its liminal greatness evolve into a science-fiction future beyond our wildest imagination, where ingenuity takes us to Mars and who knows where else. It could be said that Elon is maybe even a leader amongst the Expansionists.
Death cult versus life cult
The conceptual setup here is fascinating. Two sides of what is ultimately a death cult versus a life cult. This is putting it into very basic terms, but it gets down to the brass tacks of the matter. It explains why one side champions vehemently for the sterilization of children, makes no moral distinction between 16-week and 40-week abortion limits, and throws soup onto the great works of Western enlightenment culture.
If there is no future, then we are all nihilists and nothing matters. Art doesn’t matter, the Magna Carta doesn’t matter, our ancestors don’t matter, civilization doesn’t matter.
In this nihilistic view, it is as if the Extinctionists derive their actions from the belief that we may as well destroy everything humanity has achieved post-Enlightenment, throwing both our history and our future into the dust bin.
If nothing matters, are we at least allowed to have fun?
Yet, is the Extinctionist present therefore at least meant to be hedonistically enjoyed? Perhaps. Indeed, we do see much self-indulgence through the lens of TikTok narcissism. But at the heart of this viewpoint are the hall-monitor leftist Karens, policing everyone’s language and purity. Never correct or pure enough. These people may call themselves “progressives” but they are reminiscent of something very regressive — the killjoy Evangelicals of the 1980s and 1990s.
Even the showman Trump cottons onto this when he asks, “Has anyone ever noticed that there’s just no happiness on the Left?” And he’s right. Because how can a nihilistic death cult offer any joy?
American optimism lost?
On the other side of the coin, the Expansionist side, the will is to continue moving forward, to explore, to capitalize, to forge invention, ingenuity, to keep hope of a promising future beyond our wildest dreams. This mindset is very much a mindset that the US was founded on, one of optimism and a can-do spirit.
Sadly, this mindset has been diminished by cynicism and lost in recent decades. Will the Expansionists be able to bring it back? It is a positive mindset that supports the meritocracy, the brightest minds to solve problems, to create new solutions and come up with new ideas. This is the side of life, hence its ability to expand rather than contract.
Not without its pitfalls, however, Expansionism also can be scrutinized as giving way to recklessness, to poor stewardship of the environment, falling victim to greed.
Yet, ultimately, it does seem to be a battle between life and death. The growth or contraction of the ideals that underpin not only our nation, but Western society more broadly. If viewed through this lens that Elon lays out, the recent decisions from politicians on both sides of the aisle perhaps make more sense.
The role of AI and foreign propaganda
Furthermore — and and even more importantly — Elon goes on to say: “Now imagine if the extinctionist philosophy is programmed into AI. No need to imagine – this is already the case with Gemini and ChatGPT.”
Here, he hits the nail on the head. These technologies have been developed largely by those who hold Extinctionist world views, and hence they now corral our civilization into a defeatist direction that leads only to death and decay.
But what about foreign actors and their tools?
China is certainly a country of Expansionists, and they have cleverly used their own algorithms, primarily within the wildy popular youth platform TikTok, to implant Extinctionism (along with the aforementioned vanity and narcissism) into the minds of our malleable American youth, who faced with a cost-of-living crisis, inflation, lower living standards than that of their parents’ generation, see no hope when viewed through their indoctrinated Extinctionist lens. Their poor attention spans and substandard education allow them no reverence for the battles our ancestors fought to win us our intellectual freedom and the personal autonomy they claim not to have.
China’s own youth are served a completely different diet of TikTok content, far less prurient, for one, but also more focused on positive self-development and duty to country. Sure, it’s propaganda, but so is the content that American youth are being fed. Which diet would we rather our youth partake? Which is healthier for the future of our nation? The answer to this isn’t difficult.
Despite its flaws, the Western world in which we live is freer and fairer than any other era in human history. With a positive mindset, we can build upon that to achieve even more. The negativity of tearing things down will never achieve this.
The good guys always win
So, where do we go from here? The Extinctionist mindset has already embedded itself into American institutions, from the upper echelons of the corporate world, down to public education. It can feel like a failing battle to go against it all, but we must.
If American culture has taught me anything is that even in our darkest moments, our nation and its ideals (as naive as they may be), always somehow persevere. Light over darkness.
This year, I’ve noticed many more people speaking out against the insanity surrounding us, many more defending our Western ways of life that rely on liberalism — true liberalism, the kind that fosters free speech even of the variety of that which it disagrees with.
We are finally seeing pushback against the Extinctionist viewpoints. Meritocracy is finding its way back into institutions, even if at a more gradual pace than I’d like to see. People are starting to point out that the emperor might indeed not be wearing clothes. The fear of cancellation has abated. The spell has been broken.
The Chinese are Extinctionists. Their population has already begun to decrease.
The One Child Policy is the most antinatalist program the world has ever seen.