The affirmatives regulations are a technocratic approach to problem-solving --- the obviate

the examination of disclosedness to become cogs in the collective machine this outweighs
extinction
Rojcewicz 6 --- professor of philosophy at Point Park University (Richard, The Gods and
Technology: A Reading of Heidegger, SUNY, pg 140-142)//trepka
**we dont endorse the ableist language of this evidence

The danger Heidegger now launches an extended discussion of the danger inherent in
modern technology. It needs to be underlined that for Heidegger the threat is not simply to
human existence. The prime danger is not that high-tech devices might get out of hand and
wreck havoc on their creators by way of a radioactive spill or an all-encompassing nuclear
holocaust. The danger is not that by disposing of so many disposables we will defile the planet
and make it uninhabitable. For Heidegger the danger the prime danger does not lie in
technological things but in the essence of technology. Technological things are indeed
dangerous; the rampant exploitation of natural resources is deplorable; the contamination of
the environment is tragic. We need to conserve and to keep high-tech things from disposing of
us. Yes, for Heidegger, conservation, itself, is not the answer. Conservation alone is not
radical enough. Conservation is aimed at things, technological things and natural things, but it
does not touch the outlook or basic attitude that is the essence of modern technology, and it is
there that the danger lies. It may well be that conservation will succeed and that technology
will solve its own problems by producing things that are safe and nonpolluting; nevertheless,
the prime danger, which lies deeper down, will remain. For the danger is not primarily to the
existence of humans but to their essence: The threat to man does not come in the first
instance from the potentially lethal effects of the machines and devices of technology. The
genuine threat has already affected humans in their essence (FT, 29/28). In a sense, the
threat inherent in modern technology has already been made good. Though we have thus far
averted a nuclear disaster, that does not mean the genuine threat has been obviated. Humans
still exist; they are not yet on the endangered species list. It would of course be tragic if
humans made that list. Yet, for Heidegger, there could be something more tragic, namely for
humans to go on living but to lose their human dignity, which stems from from their essence.
Here lies the prime danger, the one posed not by technological things but by the disclosive
looking that constitutes the essence of modern technology. The prime danger is that humans
could become (and in fact are already becoming) enslaved to this way of disclosive looking.
Thus what is primarily in danger is human freedom; if humans went on living but allowed
themselves to be turned into slaves that would be the genuine tragedy. The danger in
modern technology is that humans may fail to see themselves as free followers, fail to see the
challenges directed at their freedom by the current guise of Being, and fail to see the genuine
possibilities open to them to work out their destiny. Then, not seeing their freedom, humans
will not protect it. They will let it slip away and will become mere followers, passively imposed
on by modern technology, i.e., slaves to it, mere cogs in the machine. For Heidegger, there is
an essential connection between seeing and freedom. The way out of slavery begins with
seeing, insight. But it is the right thing that must be seen, namely, ones own condition. The
danger is that humans may perfect their powers of scientific (viewing)seeing and yet be
(oblivious)blind to that wherein their dignity and freedom lie, namely the entire domain of
disclosedness and their role in it. Humans would then pose as masters of the earth, and yet
their self-blindness would make them slaves.

The 1AC is the embodiment of resilient living which responds to the question of
finitude with silence that robs us of the ability to live - bet on willing the messianic
moment only then do we expose what it means to have a meaningful life
Evans and Reid 14 (Brad Evans, professor of international relations at the University of Lapland,
Finland and Julian Reid, senior lecturer in international relations at the University of Bristol, Resilient
Life, 2014, DOA: 5-24-2016) [IB]

The question of finitude is personally and intellectually daunting. How may we begin to come to terms with our own passing
into the absolute unknown? None of this is incidental. In fact, it brings us back to the original problematic of philosophy as

we confront what it means to die? How is it possible to learn to live with death? Cornel West offers a compelling explanation.23 You know,

West responds, Plato says philosophy's a meditation on and a preparation for death. By death what he means is not an

event, but a death in life because there's no rebirth, there's no change, there's no transformation without death, and therefore the
question becomes: How do you learn how to die? To philosophize is the practice of learning to die whilst living. As West

further explains, You can't talk about truth without talking about learning how to die because it's precisely by learning

how to die, examining yourself and transforming your old self into a better self, that you actually live more intensely and critically
and abundantly. That is to say, it is only by learning how to die, by willing the messianic moment (to borrow from Walter
Benjamin) in which death is read more as a condition of affirmation, that it becomes possible to change the

present condition and create a new self by turning your world upside down. Resilience cheats us of
this affirmative task of learning how to die. It exposes life to lethal principles so that it may live a non-death. Our
wounds now exist before us. There is an important caveat to be addressed here. Some may counter that our societies are actually

bombarded with various spectacles of violence that actually speak directly to the problem of finitude. While this is partly true, such
finite moments only headline in extremity. That is to say, we learn to mourn those deaths which reaffirm the
dangerous threshold of existence. Think here of 9/11, tsunamis, catastrophic accidents, incurable virulent
diseases and so on. Then compare to the daily plight of suffering that is largely ignored or not considered
newsworthy enough to draw our attentions. Indeed, as Zygmunt Bauman explains, while liberal societies have become
fascinated with the spectacle of violence (especially as entertainment), for the most part, death as an experience for
philosophical reflection has become a private affair hidden from the public gaze.24 For instance, while headstones of
the recently deceased seldom write of a person simply having died a natural death (there is always something responsible), to think about the

question of death as an ontological condition for subsequent re-birth is relegated to the world of
religious superstition/pathology or some dangerous attempts to counter liberal reason with the violence
of self-immolation. Any rigorous critique of resilience must therefore deal with the conflict between the lethality of freedom and
the philosophical question of death, for it is here we may expose deeply embedded ontological and metaphysical claims

about what it means to live a meaningful life beyond the biophysical.

1AC is sign pollution they identify a problem and assign a quick fix signifier in
response - this fails only the ALT effectively investigates the ramifications of a
simulated ecology which is a key first step to accessing solvency
Beever 13 (Jonathan, Department of Philosophy @Purdue,"Baudrillards simulated ecology", DOA:6-
13-16) [IB]

We have seen that the simulation of Nature has been a ramifi cation of the semiotic postmodern condition. We have also seen that this simulation endangers
the traditional teleology of the environmentalist. Th e only question remains: is the death or end of Nature
necessary, given the postmodern condition? Ecosemioticians argue no: despite the deconstruction of the Grand Narrative of Nature in-itself, natural and
ecological ends are still accessible. Th e fundamental insight of ecosemiotic is that, despite semiosic mediation, science that empirical process of verifi able

observation remains open to us. We can come to know the processes of nature through the study of signifi

cation amongst natural entities. According to Winfried Nth (1998: 333) Ecosemiotics will be study in sign processes that is not restricted to arbitrary and artifi cial
signs. It will also, and perhaps primarily, be concerned with natural signs mediating between the organism and its environment. Th us the natural survives and thrives in postmodernity.

Baudrillard, on the other hand, certainly seems to think that the breakdown of the subject/object relation is fi nal. To that
But

). This breakdown
eff ect he writes: One cannot at the same time grasp the real and its sign: we shall never again master the two simultaneously (Baudrillard 2003: 77

pushes the limits of a system built upon modern metaphysical foundations and shows the inevitable end
of the traditional environmental movement. Th e ecological eff ort in struggle against the subsumption
of the real by the sign will be extinguished with the fall of the modern metaphysic to the rise of the
semiological conditions of postmodernity. Given this critical insight by Baudrillard, we might assume that a return, so to speak, to a modern
conception of the ontological relationship of Nature to the human being is impossible. If we agree with Kull that the
semiotization of nature necessitates the building of successive phases of simulation of nature, we look to the possibility, within this context, of a relationship less harmful to biodiversity and
the goals of the environmental movement. Semiotic ecology is extended ecology, Kull (1998: 363) writes, with a change in its philosophical and methodological assumptions. Th e
environmental movement and ecosemiotics stand in a symbiotic relationship. Th e evolution of postmodern ecology will be driven by the postmodern semiotic metaphysic, fi ghting to assert
signifi cation of nature as essential to survival of the semiosphere; and against gett ing mired in the relativism of myriad simulacral representations, the project of ecosemiotics is the justifi
cation of scientifi cally-appropriate representations. Following Baudrillards critical position toward the ramifi cations of the semiotic shift , some contemporary environmental ethicists such as
Mark Rowlands have already begun to affi rm this shift in a positive way. Th e self-stated purpose of Rowlands Th e Environmental Crisis is to show why for the purposes of developing a
satisfactory environmental ethic, we need to break down the subject/object distinction (Rowlands 2000: ix). Rowlands ultimate goal of pulling the mind into the world (Rowlands 2000: 10),
as opposed to the inverse condition found in modernity up through Kant, mirrors the postmodern paradigm shift ; i.e., one can consider Rowlands as giving ontological preference to the
semiosphere as opposed to the individual human mind. He can be read as sett ing up a way of signs over a way of ideas for environmental ethics. Likewise, however, the principles that drive

Just as pollution of Nature became a problem

the traditional green movement conservation, sustainability, etc. also ought to drive ecosemiotics.

for traditional environmentalists, so too must proliferation of more signs over better signs sign pollution become
a signifi cant problem for semioticians4 . But the solution to sign pollution must not be considered to be pure signification,

just as the solution to air pollution must not be considered to be pure air. Such consideration calls forth
the nostalgic specter of Grand Narratives. Rather, the solution to air pollution is air breathable by
human and nonhuman animals; and the solution to sign pollution must be sign relationships negotiable
by human and nonhuman meaning-makers. Th us when Roland Posner, for instance, sought out a possible means for objectively measuring the degree of
semiotic pollution (Posner 2000: 290291), he sought to develop a semiotic approach to postmodern ecology. However, for him semiotic pollution is only anthropocentrically threatening: it
endangers the fundamentals of human interaction and wind[s] up hindering [] those semiotic processes originally intended to facilitate human interaction (Posner 2000: 293). Although
Posner cites Nths 1996 ecosemiotic thesis as his goal (Posner 2000: 294), he confl ates communication and signifi cation in focusing on human interpretation of the confl ux of signs.

Carefully negotiating this distinction is paramount to semiotic ecology in the face of the postmodern
proliferation of signs and simulacra. Commenting on the proliferation of signs Baudrillard (2004: 23) writes: Its like a desperate att empt
to fi ll some void, where it should be the aim to fi nd the interstice in the void. Such an interstice
between the natural and the semiotic, between the modern and the postmodern, is the survival of
semiotic ecology: this is the goal of both Baudrillards critical theory and ecosemiotic analyses. Baudrillard is at once
sympathetic to and critical of the conditions of this semiotic postmodernity, understanding the
inevitability of the rise of the simulacrum but also the dangers inherent therein. Th is understanding is
requisite for ecosemiotics, faced with like Baudrillard the postmodern era of semiosis and simulation. Th e
potential of both analyses off ers an environmentalist perspective within a simulated ecology of the
integral relationship between the ecosphere and the semiosphere. In this paper I have equated the postmodern with the semiotic
interpretation of the natural world, juxtaposing it against the modern distinction between the subject and the object. From this stance, I have shown that environmentalism
must be reconceptualized to take account of the loss of the represented real. From semiotics to
semiurgy5 , the postmodern world loses track of the real by covering it up with a proliferation not
merely of signs but of simulacra. Baudrillard shows us that understanding the ramifications of a
simulated ecology is the first step for any practical ecosemiotic approach to environmentalism.6

The impact is unbounded nihilism

Evans and Reid 14 (Brad Evans, professor of international relations at the University of Lapland,
Finland and Julian Reid, senior lecturer in international relations at the University of Bristol, Resilient
Life, 2014, DOA: 5-24-2016) [IB]

No longer does the resilient subject solely project its resentfulness onto the souls of Others. It resents the living world, for it too is
radically endangering. It is here that catastrophic imaginaries begin to truly thrive. The resilient subject is shaped and anxiously mobilized by the

prospect of the coming catastrophe. It fears the transformation of the subject, just as it fears the
transformation of the ecosystem that gives sustenance to life. Our rage as such, to borrow from Sloterdijk, has become truly
limitless. As everything becomes the source of our endangerment, we internalize the ressentiment and

proliferate our impotence with unrivalled intensity and absolute necessity. Hence this produces a form of
nihilism which is unbounded. For no longer do we simply resent the teleological unfolding of history as
we phase shift from masters to slaves to masters; there is no mastery to speak of and as a result all our
lament filters into a politics of ressentiment as we are left to simply govern through our continually
unfolding state of unending emergency.

We must craft an affirmative conception of subjectivity in response to the Sixth

Extinction Event. What is obscured by scientific and economic responses to climate
change is that the metaphysical question of the human subject is a necessary
prerequisite to imagining sustainable futures.
Evans and Reid 14. Brad Evans, professor of international relations at the University of Lapland,
Finland and Julian Reid, senior lecturer in international relations at the University of Bristol, Resilient
Life, 2014, pg. 152

The concept of extinction as it is currently employed in claims concerning the already occurring process
of the Sixth Extinction within the discourse of global ecological catastrophe is also non-equivocal. Of
course, extinction can be a risk and possibility that one might successfully avoid. But this is not the
truth we are told of our times, which in the end will result in extinction. We are told that we are
already in the Sixth Extinction; a moment in our life-world cycle that is already happening. Regardless
of how much time we may buy ourselves now by recognizing the truth of finitude, recovery of
biodiversity will not occur in any timeframe meaningful to people: evolution of new species typically
takes at least hundreds of thousands of years and recovery from mass extinction episodes probably
occurs on timescales encompassing millions of years.18 So, despite our best efforts at adaption, we are
merely enduring and living through the conditions of the event of the Sixth Extinction, not overcoming
or preventing its occurrence. This to us seems to be a highly questionable deal once broached either
politically or philosophically. We seem to be in good company. For this problem was already raised by
Nietzsche, who once again proves his remarkable capacity to think in the most untimely ways to
challenge that which initially seems insurmountable and the source for lament: Once upon a time, in
some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems,
there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and
mendacious minute of world history, but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a
few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. One might invent such a
fable, and yet he [they] still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and
transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities
during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have
happened.19 This infamous passage from On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense has often been read to
further the charges of nihilism. Nothing will have happened, so what is the point to it all? Nothing,
however, could be further from the truth. A central question Nietzsche put in this article was What
does man actually know about himself? Which also may be put in a more affirmative way to read How
can man live differently once he [they] accepts the errors of his [their] ways?. For Nietzsche, part of
the genius of construc- tion lies in our abilities to bring error into reason. We live, he maintained, by
the error of our ways. And long may it continue. We also live in a magnificent fabricating universe
where the power of fabulation produces different senses of perception that are no less true to the
subjects existence. More than necessary for revealing the suffocating modes of being which are
continually authenticated in modern times, it was essential to its over-coming. It is a mistake, therefore,
to read Nietzsches original provocation on the end of times as the triumph of resentment and
negation. On the contrary, he provides an acute warning as to the dangers of living unto the end as if
nothing will have happened. Or to put it another way, to continue to live beneath the suffocating
clouds of despair is sure testimony to the fact that there is nothing to live of meaning: The most
extreme form of nihilism would be the view that every belief, every holding-something-true is
necessarily false because there is no true world.20 For Nietzsche, the counter to this will-to-
nothingness could not be achieved by turning towards some conservative approximation of truth that
reveals some immutable essence. It demands a veritable courage to truth that weathers the storm in
order to emerge transformed: When a real storm cloud thunders above him [them], he [they] wraps
himself [themselves] in his [their] cloak[s], and with slow steps he [they] walks from beneath it21. This
raises a number of significant questions for us: If we accept the truth and reality of the global ecological
catastrophe, then how else might we respond to it? If we accept, especially, our responsibility as a
species for the creation of this catastrophe, how does such an acceptance affect our response? Ought
we not to question the injunction to respond by merely seeking to adapt in order to survive longer?
Given that it is the very ethics of species survival and development that accounts, at base, for the
existence of human responsibility for the global ecological catastrophe, ought we not to be seeking
alternative answers to the question of how we want to live out this self-fulfilling endgame of human
existence? If there is such a thing indeed as a global ecological catastrophe, surely the question
becomes one that seeks to stake out a more affirmative choice? How do we desire to live out these end
times of human existence so that our end might no longer be conditioned by the fear of that end? If it
is an end, and if it is true that there is no turning back from this tipping point of extinction time, why are
we choosing to live out that end by adapting to the conditions of our own demise, rather than with
experimenting with other ways of living less attached to preserving our life as such, and more attuned to
the inevitability of death and extinction as realities that can contribute to the intensity of our experience
of worldly living for the finite time that we are left with as a species already fated to extinction in the
end? These questions are profoundly philosophical. And rightly so! The assault we are witnessing on
the political today is so intellectually catastrophic that the only solutions presented to us as viable
propose changes so that everything ultimately remains the same. For what are we really conserving
when we offer vulnerability to counter vulnerability and insecurity to counter insecurity? This is the
real mastery of neoliberalism. For it has led us into a catastrophic quagmire that is fully in keeping with
its need to reproduce conditions that are insecure by design; and yet it is managing to repackage itself
as the most enlightened way to navigate the uncertain waters, albeit with a captainless crew, which
ultimately accepts that the promised land will never be shored. So surely without the ability to step
back from the catastrophic injunction with more consideration, and bring into question the framing of
the debates which offer various technocratic solutions to the effects brought about by ecological
change, however devastating, to begin questioning the philosophical and political stakes, how is it at all
possible to even think about setting a new course of direction with a confidence in our abilities to live
through these uncertain times, and view the troubled waters in a new, more exhilarating and
aesthetically enriching light of day?