What would it be like to be the last human being on earth?

Unless a sudden cataclysm wipes out all of remaining humanity at once, there will someday actually be one final person alive. In my imagination, this human “endling”—the final, lone representative of our species before it goes extinct—would be conscious of himself and his situation. He would still have enough passion and desire to contemplate his existence and discern the meaning of it all. I imagine him as reflective, a person who wanted to make sense of his strange, final reality—the last in a line of a hundred or two hundred billion people.

Here are some of the thoughts and feelings I imagine he would have:

“I am so lonely. What a misfortune to be a member of a social species, yet have no one with whom to socialize.”

“I live like a lone dolphin trapped in a concrete tank, crying out for my fellows yet receiving no answers.”

“Is there a reason to go on?”

“Why did my human ancestors fail me so horribly? Why did they not see the obvious that was coming and work through their internal blocks to avoid this hell? How did we screw up so badly?”

“I am just one in a long line of “endlings”—dolphins, whales, all other primates, the large carnivores, most birds, most amphibians.”

“We humans truly did foment the Sixth Mass Extinction—and it has finally reached us.”

“To think that people expected religion or space aliens or interstellar travel to save our species—yet none of them did. All of those hopes eventually showed themselves to be the mirages they always were.”

“Should I write down my thoughts and feelings, my reflections on my terrible fate? It seems obvious now that no one but me will ever read my words, so what is the point?”

“I feel angry, hurt, betrayed by all those who came before me. I have read their words, their philosophies, their projections of the meaning of it all, and from my perspective I see their delusion. Yet what do my feelings matter?”
“There is nothing more ridiculous than my sexual feelings, because it is now more obvious than ever that they serve no purpose. Yet I still have them.”

“I could lay claim to this whole planet and call it mine, even give it a new name, yet to what end? But I will give it a new name. I will call it Solitaria.”

“I have gold and silver but they are worth nothing.”

“I read books and they feed my soul, but I feel I am just fooling myself, using them as a drug.”

“When I was born could my parents have ever imagined that this would be my destiny?”

“And why me of all people? Was I chosen for this strange and unique life?”

“And how strange that my thoughts are new and original and still evolving, yet I am the last in a line of a billion years of evolution.”

“I think many others lived emotional lives similar to the actual life I live now. They had no one who saw them, no one who heard them, no one who cared. I know how much they must have suffered.”

“No one will grieve my death, so I must grieve it for myself.”

“Why were we humans blessed with such a great brain, with such marvelous capacities, yet burdened with such profound shortcomings?”

“Our unresolved traumas kept us trapped like crabs in a barrel. Even if one tried to crawl out the others pulled him back in.”

“I could see why another person in my situation might want to commit suicide, but I still want to live.”

“Maybe I am not actually the last human alive. Maybe there are other people out there somewhere. Even if this is not true, I must believe it. I must search for them! I must feed myself and live for that possibility.”

5 thoughts on “What would it be like to be the last human being on earth?

  1. Interesting. All the lonely children of this planet repress these thoughts. They are so lonely, and later try to escape from it by day dreaming cataclysms in order to express it freely without going deep. Zombie’s world is also a typical fantasy to express the lack of empathy of this zombified adults…

  2. Seems very much like the book, by Daniel Quinn- “Ishmael”. This book and the ones Daniel Quinn wrote relating to it, have actually created a living community, which can be found at http://www.ishmael.org -anyone here not familiar with this insightful work, would perhaps find other “last human beings on earth”

  3. “Maybe I am not actually the last human alive. Maybe there are other people out there somewhere. Even if this is not true, I must believe it. I must search for them! I must feed myself and live for that possibility.”

    — The last human being is a GROUP of people who start as the first.

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