Belle & Sebastian, How To Solve Our Human Problems
It’s tough being alive. Just ask David Benatar, a professor of philosophy at the University of Cape Town. He’s a champion of “anti-natalism,” a school of thought that believes all sentient life is doomed to suffer.
Benatar’s solution to human pain and impending environmental catastrophe is something called the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. It can be summarized as follows: stop having sex, save the planet, and end needless suffering. Anti-natalism solves the problem of human existence the same way the guillotine solves the problem of teenage acne.
Isn’t there another way forward?
That’s what Belle and Sebastian want to find on their latest project, How to Solve Our Human Problems, a double album’s worth of material set to be released in three parts between December and February. On Part 1, which hits stores next Friday, the Scottish indie rock band says that extinction is not the solution to our existential problems. Instead, salvation lies in the everyday relationships that make us stronger together and that ultimately give meaning to our humble, cosmically insignificant lives.
The album is, for the most part, straightforward rock ’n’ roll. But these industry veterans know how to give flourish to the familiar. Listen to the chorus of their recent single, “We Were Beautiful.” The fuzzy, ascending bass and swirl of a far-off horn elevate the relentlessness of aging to something amiable, even warm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuyiXzpXUYE
The lyrics dwell on beauty-past, but the song doesn’t feel maudlin or nostalgic. Middle age hasn’t changed what Belle & Sebastian love doing, just as our troubled times haven’t changed our shared imperative to live on anyway. Listen to the bridge on that same track.
There’s bliss in the very fact of life, however messy its outlook. It’s the perspective of frontman Stuart Murdoch, an evident pro-natalist who recently welcomed into the world his second child. “I’ll Be Your Pilot,” another single from the album, celebrates human life as a partnership — father to son, friend to friend, human to human.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkY6RV0nVEA
It’s a direct rebuke to the humanitarian pessimists. Being in the world is messy and dangerous and no, it doesn’t make sense. But it does make us human, and there’s joy in that.
