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- Sep 13, 2007
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Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899-1990) viewed humans as a biological paradox. Consciousness has become over-evolved in humans, therefore making us incapable of functioning normally like other animals: cognition gives us more than we can carry. We want to live, and yet because of how we have evolved, we are the only species aware that it is destined to die. We are able to analyze the past for broad expectations of the future, both our situation and situations of others; we expect justice and meaning in a world where neither occur. This ensures that the lives of conscious individuals are tragic. We have desires which reality is unable to satisfy, and our species still exists because we limit our awareness of what that reality actually entails. Human existence amounts to a tangled network of defense mechanisms, which can be observed both individually and socially, in our everyday behavior patterns. According to Zapffe, humanity should cease this self deception, and in consequence, passively end its existence by living out the lives already created but actively abstain from procreation, thus ceasing to create new lives.