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manlyboy
Joined: 01 Aug 2004
Location: Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
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 Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 9:49 pm Post subject: The suicide of the West |
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These two essays have made me seriously question my views on liberalism. To be open to other views to the point of accepting ones which would actually seek to destroy liberalism (ie sharia law) is simply nonsensical. Why do liberals fight so hard for social welfare, medicare, tolerance, and the like, yet seem reluctant to fight the people who would destroy these things? What really strikes me is the seeming lack of purpose and meaning within liberalism. If all views are to be accepted, then does anything really matter anymore? Without meaning, how could people not turn to despair?
http://www.newcriterion.com/archives/24/01/after-the-suicide/
http://www.newcriterion.com/archives/24/01/its-the-demography/
The website is down at the moment, so here's an excellent summary of them.
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/
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Kimball and Steyn on the end of the West
Two essays in the New Criterion talk about the West almost in the past tense. Roger Kimball's After the suicide of the West pronounces his post-mortem: a civilization suicided from despair; death from want of a reason to live. The contradiction within liberalism -- within multiculturalism -- Kimball argues, is that it unwilling to believe in anything definite, even in itself.
... an essay called ��The Self-Poisoning of the Open Society,�� ... dilates on this basic antinomy of liberalism. Liberalism implies openness to other points of view, even ... those points of view whose success would destroy liberalism. But tolerance to those points of view is a prescription for suicide. ... As Robert Frost once put it, a liberal is someone who refuses to take his own part in an argument.
And having emptied life of belief, liberalism has not coincidentally also emptied it of meaning. Kimball quotes Douglas Murray to evoke the atmosphere of a civilization partying frenetically on the brink of black nothingness.
It may be no sin -- may indeed be one of our society��s most appealing traits -- that we love life. But the scales, as in so many things, have tipped to an extreme. From seeing so much for which we would live, people in our society now see fewer and fewer causes for which they would die. We have passed to a point where prolongation is all. We have become like the parents of Admetos in Euripides�� Alcestis -- "walking cadavers," unwilling to give up the few remaining days (in Europe��s case, of its peace dividend) even if only by doing so can any generational future be assured.
Liberalism's first step is to render the past, with its ties to memory and tradition, despicable and valueless. From there it inevitably proceeds to make the future futile. The "me" generation is liberated not only from its myths but also from its dreams. Kimball cites James Burnham. Modern liberalism, Burnham writes:
does not offer ordinary men compelling motives for personal suffering, sacrifice, and death. There is no tragic dimension in its picture of the good life. Men become willing to endure, sacrifice, and die for God, for family, king, honor, country, from a sense of absolute duty or an exalted vision of the meaning of history�� . And it is precisely these ideas and institutions that liberalism has criticized, attacked, and in part overthrown as superstitious, archaic, reactionary, and irrational. In their place liberalism proposes a set of pale and bloodless abstractions—pale and bloodless for the very reason that they have no roots in the past, in deep feeling and in suffering. Except for mercenaries, saints, and neurotics, no one is willing to sacrifice and die for progressive education, medicare, humanity in the abstract, the United Nations, and a ten percent rise in Social Security payments.
From Kimball's perspective the contest between Islam and liberal civilization is not simply between East and West, but between the living and the dying.
Mark Steyn makes a less abstract argument in It��s the demography, stupid. Steyn's key literary skill is to state the obvious in ways that refute conventional wisdom. In this essay he is at his epigramatic best. The challenge now, he says, is no longer to save the West, but to see if anything can still be saved. For the West, make no mistake, is dying.
The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birth rate to sustain it. Post-Christian hyper-rationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than Catholicism or Mormonism. Indeed, in its reliance on immigration to ensure its future, the European Union has adopted a twenty-first-century variation on the strategy of the Shakers, who were forbidden from reproducing and thus could only increase their numbers by conversion. ...
That��s what the war��s about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder"—as can be seen throughout much of "the western world" right now. The progressive agenda —lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism—is collectively the real suicide bomb. ...
When it comes to forecasting the future, the birth rate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2006, it��s hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2026 (or 2033, or 2037, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management and Queer Studies degrees). ... Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb: the grand buildings will still be standing but the people who built them will be gone. We are living through a remarkable period: the self-extinction of the races who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world. ...
Permanence is the illusion of every age. In 1913, no one thought the Russian, Austrian, German, and Turkish empires would be gone within half a decade. Seventy years on, all those fellows who dismissed Reagan as an ��amiable dunce�� (in Clark Clifford��s phrase) assured us the Soviet Union was likewise here to stay. ... Religious cultures have a much greater sense of both past and future, as we did a century ago, when we spoke of death as joining "the great majority" in "the unseen world." But if secularism��s starting point is that this is all there is, it's no surprise that, consciously or not, they invest the here and now with far greater powers of endurance than it's ever had. The idea that progressive Euro-welfarism is the permanent resting place of human development was always foolish; we now know that it��s suicidally so. ...
"What do you leave behind?" asked Tony Blair. There will only be very few and very old ethnic Germans and French and Italians by the midpoint of this century. What will they leave behind? ... It��s the demography, stupid. And, if they can��t muster the will to change course, then "what do you leave behind?" is the only question that matters.
Commentary
One of the most remarkable things about suicides is how they struggle at the last. They clutch frantically at the strangling noose they had calmly put around their necks; they swim a few desperate strokes after they've jumped from the bridge; they call for help after they've taken the pills. I predicted Kate Burton would have nothing bad to say about the men who abducted her and her family in Gaza. I was only partly right. She gave a lengthy interview in the Independent, describing her confinement, which paints a more complex picture.
"I got really mad and said: 'I can't believe you're doing this. Do you want me to get down on my knees and say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you?' I was exhausted and started crying. I said: 'I came here to work with the Palestinian people and now I feel I have been stabbed in the back.' ...
Ms Burton said she felt "sorry for the guys" because of their "shattered lives", and the fact that they were, in effect, on the run and had family members who had been killed in the conflict. But, at the same time, she added: "I can't forgive them for what they did and I hope they don't keep doing it in the future. I understand that the majority of the Palestinian people are not like them." ...
She said the kidnappers - who had apparently tracked the Burtons during their tour of Rafah - told the family they had a made a mistake. "They said they thought we were Americans," Ms Burton said. "But when I said you have made a mistake, so why not let us go, they said it was too late." The kidnappers told the family repeatedly that they would be released unharmed "in a few hours".
I wonder what objection would have been raised if the kidnappers had captured Americans, or maybe even Jews; where would the error be? And for a moment, reading the Independent, I remembered the feelings of Winston Smith as the torturers prepared to have his face eaten out by rats in Room 101.
The wire door was a couple of hand-spans from his face. The rats knew what was coming now. One of them was leaping up and down, the other, an old scaly grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink hands against the bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston could see the whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black panic took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless.
'It was a common punishment in Imperial China,' said O'Brien as didactically as ever.
The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek. And then -- no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just one person to whom he could transfer his punishment -- one body that he could thrust between himself and the rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.
'Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!'
What do you leave behind? |
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shakuhachi
Joined: 08 Feb 2003
Location: Sydney
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| Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 10:29 pm Post subject: |
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The west is in trouble. The liberal belief that everyone wants exactly the same thing, like religious freedom and democracy has dramatically been proven wrong. Now there are millions of people living in the west that care nothing for the freedom, democracy, history, law, or traditional religion of the host nations. All they care about is the standard of living, a standard of living that will surely go down as the west adopts the third world values of an increasing number of its citizens.
What is extremely ironic that that Britain, Australia and some other countries accept people from the middle east as refugees because they were persecuted by their governments... persecuted because they were too extreme and insist on sharia law! Furthermore, we went to war to bring down the taliban, and now many taliban are living in the west as refugees! I dont want a taliban as a next door neighbour.
It is a big mistake to just assume that people have exactly the same values as yourself. They dont. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 11:05 pm Post subject: |
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These two guys presented are not the most eloquent advocates of this theme, but they are certainly well aware of the coming crisis of the modern world. The good news is that while the West is in trouble, America itself has not yet been infected to the extent that Western Europe has.
The other good news is that the characterization the authors made about Islam is probably wrong, or at least incomplete. Right now fundamentalist extremist Islam is a reaction to the West's decay and also an anticipation of Islam's decay. What the extremists fear is that they have only a generation left. Liberalism and market forces are (ever slowly) spreading in the region. But most threatening is public education, particularly one open to all sexes. There have been connections made between falling fertility rates in the Muslim world correlating with rising women's literacy rates. It seems doubtful to me that extremist Islam will be able to stop the advance of Western-style liberalism in the 20-some years it has, although certainly a lot of people will die as they suffer their 'last throes.'
South Korea and Japan face the same demographic crunches as Europe, suggesting that while their Eastern ethoses may have lent themselves to the work ethic comparable the Max Weber's Protestant determinant in the West that allows them to modernize, they still lack a prescription for the post-modern crisis of the collapse of the traditional.
We watched nationalism/fascism wash away due to its own contradictions, and the ideological war between liberal democracy and authoritarian communism has shown the former to be the clear victors. We may well be at the end of history, at the end of the long struggle to find a viable system of social and political life without inherent contradictions (problems, sure, big issues, definitely, but no crisis that challenges the very legitimacy of liberal democracy). But without war where do men profoundly experience a sense of their mortality? In the United States the baby boom was sparked by the arrival home of war veterans who had experienced the 'futility' and madness of war intimately. The United States is not projected to see such a population boom again in its near-to-mid future, and will only keep itself demographically afloat due to immigration.
In the end, perhaps this is the contradiction of liberal democracy. It offers nothing beyond fairness, comfort, good living, and their accompanying disease; decadence. Like the modern science that sustains it and makes its export so irresistable, liberal democracy cannot answer the question as to why exist? It cannot account for final causes, and thus cannot account for the question as to why have children? And while this may not act as a contradiction to liberal democracy anymore than modern science's inability to address the issues of final cause undermines its amazing success in its proper and rightful sphere of power of mastering nature, it still reminds us that liberal democracy may not be in itself complete, and demands a strong spirit to sustain itself. |
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bigverne
Joined: 12 May 2004
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:49 am Post subject: |
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Kuros, the article you posted really does not inspire much confidence, as it ends with this quote.
"A Muslim takeover of Western Europe surely is a possible outcome."
America will become less White, although it will still be a predominantly Christian nation committed to democratic Western values. It is likely that it will continue to be the world's preeminent power for some decades yet. Europe will be more muslim, more divided, and possibly on the brink of civil war as countries like France come to resemble Nigeria. The EU is likely to collapse and the idea of Europe ever challenging the USA look laughable. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 3:02 am Post subject: |
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| bigverne wrote: |
Kuros, the article you posted really does not inspire much confidence, as it ends with this quote.
"A Muslim takeover of Western Europe surely is a possible outcome."
America will become less White, although it will still be a predominantly Christian nation committed to democratic Western values. It is likely that it will continue to be the world's preeminent power for some decades yet. Europe will be more muslim, more divided, and possibly on the brink of civil war as countries like France come to resemble Nigeria. The EU is likely to collapse and the idea of Europe ever challenging the USA look laughable. |
No, I agree with the article, a Muslim takeover of Western Europe is certainly possible. But this is not because of Islamic extremism (unless you claim that all Islam is extreme) but because Western Europe continues to exert its will to suicide. Still, one has to understand that Islam is not some all-powerful vital force, and that the Muslim world will probably succumb to liberal democracy within the next century. But those who rebel and resist will do so far more than anyone has to date. |
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bigverne
Joined: 12 May 2004
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 3:27 am Post subject: |
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| But this is not because of Islamic extremism (unless you claim that all Islam is extreme) but because Western Europe continues to exert its will to suicide. |
You are exactly right. Europe will likely, on current trends, become Islamic due to rampant immigration, and our unwillingness to stop it due to our obsession with multiculturalism and 'tolerance'. I don't think anyone is under any illusions that this will be a bad thing, because yes, Islam is essentially extreme and intolerant and is contradictory to almost all we hold dear.
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| the Muslim world will probably succumb to liberal democracy within the next century. |
I think you are being very optimistic. However, you are right when you say this will only occur after much bloodshed, possibly involving the deaths of millions on a global scale. I would rather that Europe, and the rest of the world were not dragged into such a conflict, yet we are pursuing policies that will lead to exactly such an outcome.
Israel 2005. Paris 2025. |
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manlyboy
Joined: 01 Aug 2004
Location: Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 8:06 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for the thought-provoking replies.
shakuhachi:
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| What is extremely ironic that that Britain, Australia and some other countries accept people from the middle east as refugees because they were persecuted by their governments... persecuted because they were too extreme and insist on sharia law! Furthermore, we went to war to bring down the taliban, and now many taliban are living in the west as refugees! I dont want a taliban as a next door neighbour. |
Hell yes! The more I read about sharia law, the more I realise how inimical it is to my own way of life. Men are permitted to beat their wives; There is no separation of religion and government; Very strict dietary rules; Not a drop of alcohol is to be consumed; Polygamy; Women must dress "modestly"; Monotonous ritual; The death penalty for apostasy; And being completely forbidden to ever question any of it!
I understand that in Canada they've actually opened up some kind of Sharia law court for Muslims who don't wish to judged via the Canadian legal system. That seems absurd to me! Giving a foothold to a belief system which would seek to destroy the very system which allowed it to take root.
kuros:
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| The other good news is that the characterization the authors made about Islam is probably wrong, or at least incomplete. Right now fundamentalist extremist Islam is a reaction to the West's decay and also an anticipation of Islam's decay. What the extremists fear is that they have only a generation left. Liberalism and market forces are (ever slowly) spreading in the region. But most threatening is public education, particularly one open to all sexes. There have been connections made between falling fertility rates in the Muslim world correlating with rising women's literacy rates. It seems doubtful to me that extremist Islam will be able to stop the advance of Western-style liberalism in the 20-some years it has, although certainly a lot of people will die as they suffer their 'last throes.' |
Hmm...that's very interesting. That's a point of view I hadn't considered. I hope you're right. However, the seemingly endless conveyor belt line of suicide bombers across the Muslim world gives me reason to pause before believing they are in their last throes. Still, your argument makes good sense.
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| In the end, perhaps this is the contradiction of liberal democracy. It offers nothing beyond fairness, comfort, good living, and their accompanying disease; decadence. Like the modern science that sustains it and makes its export so irresistable, liberal democracy cannot answer the question as to why exist? It cannot account for final causes, and thus cannot account for the question as to why have children? |
This is what really sticks it in and breaks it off for me. What exactly is a liberal willing to fight and die for? Where is the sense of purpose?
bigverne:
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| America will become less White, although it will still be a predominantly Christian nation committed to democratic Western values. It is likely that it will continue to be the world's preeminent power for some decades yet. Europe will be more muslim, more divided, and possibly on the brink of civil war as countries like France come to resemble Nigeria. The EU is likely to collapse and the idea of Europe ever challenging the USA look laughable. |
Isn't America's birth rate 2.7? And isn't that growth being fueled almost excusively by the red states? One could infer that liberalism is committing suicide even within America.
And yes, Europe as we know it looks dead in the water, doesn't it? Someone remarked that why would Muslims blow up the London subway when by the end of the century they will OWN the London subway. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 2:47 am Post subject: |
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| In Austrialia police are now told to treat domestic violence differently when it involves a Muslim in order to be more sensitive to their culture or something. Yes on current trends the West seems determined to rush down the path to oblivion. But given the current trend of "liberalism and market style forces" mentioned in the below article, Islam (at least its negative aspects) may not be far behind. |
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Paji eh Wong
Joined: 03 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 4:38 am Post subject: |
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| Mark Steyn makes a less abstract argument in It��s the demography, stupid. Steyn's key literary skill is to state the obvious in ways that refute conventional wisdom. In this essay he is at his epigramatic best. The challenge now, he says, is no longer to save the West, but to see if anything can still be saved. For the West, make no mistake, is dying. |
The "demographics as destiny" argument fails to compell me any more. The writer I most associate with this argument is Spengler, which Kuros already beat me in linking to. Read some of his articles, its more of the same.
In nature, its common for animal populations to become so successful that they undergo a huge spike in numbers in a relatively short amount of time. That sort of growth is, of course, unsustainable. After the population eclipses the carrying capacity for it environment, massive scarcity, famine and death follow. See: lemmings for a spectacular example. If you take a look at the human population over its 140 000 (or so) year history, you'll notice the same sort of spike happening right now. But for some reason (*cough* arrogance *ahem*) we seem unable to put two and two together on this one. We like to think we're better than animals, that we aren't subject to the same laws of nature.
So, I think this dramatic population decline is well on its way. In some ways we are already self regulating our population density, mostly through economics. Real wages have been falling for what, the last 25 years? Like Wangja said elsewhere, the true inflation rate is somewhere at 7%. That means if you aren't making 7% more per year, you're going backwards. And how much more time per week do people spend making ends meet now?
My 3 little sisters and I had a great childhood. It was stable, anxiety free, and I came out well educated. By the time I'm old enough to want kids, having a family of 6 will be unfeasible. The economics simply don't add up. And I think that's a good thing. It beats the hell out of everyone still having famillies of 6 and then having to kill each other over resources.
So, back to the article OP. Do I think that a retreat to conservative values will save us, no I don't. What the authour is implying is that we need to return to our God-fearing, gird-your-loins, go-forth-and-multiply roots. I don't think that's feasible. We are in for a demographics collapse and there is nothing in our history to suggest we can manage that. Its been tried elsewhere, (see: Easter Island) and failed.
The OP raises some good points. We are going to have to make a lot of difficult choices in the future. It will take a lot political courage, especially if you're a person who's attached to the welfare state in its current form. But the way out I see is forward, not backward. We are going to have to embrace population decline and learn how to manage it. Laissez-faire capitalism and the rugged individual aren't going to do it.
We need a consensus, we need a plan, but most of all we need to show some adaptability.
ps. A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright is an accessible introduction to why societies fail. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 5:13 am Post subject: |
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| I understand that in Canada they've actually opened up some kind of Sharia law court for Muslims who don't wish to judged via the Canadian legal system. |
Nothing of the sort happened. What did happen was that the province of Ontario commissioned a report that recommended giving Muslim couples the right to ask for religious arbitration in matters of family law. This would have put Muslims on an equal par with Christians and Jews, who had already been granted that right by a previous government.
However, after much public outcry, the government decided against giving Muslims arbitration rights. Furthermore, they decided to remove ALL existing religious arbitration rights(ie. Christian and Jewish) from the books. |
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rapier
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 5:52 am Post subject: |
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| Europe has largely shed christian conviction and direction...and is thus quite vulnerable. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 10:38 pm Post subject: |
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| In nature, its common for animal populations to become so successful that they undergo a huge spike in numbers in a relatively short amount of time. That sort of growth is, of course, unsustainable. After the population eclipses the carrying capacity for it environment, massive scarcity, famine and death follow. See: lemmings for a spectacular example. If you take a look at the human population over its 140 000 (or so) year history, you'll notice the same sort of spike happening right now. But for some reason (*cough* arrogance *ahem*) we seem unable to put two and two together on this one. We like to think we're better than animals, that we aren't subject to the same laws of nature. |
We are better than animals. However, it is still an open question as to whether we are subject to the same so-called 'law of nature' that you introduce to us above. And no, correlating circumstances accompanied by the remark that humans are arrogant does not amount to a compelling explanation of the current demographic decline.
I agree Spengler overstates himself, but thats because he is merely a disciple of Franz Rosensweig and he has a weekly column. Not only does he have pressure to deliver every week, which would kill any philosopher, but he is not exactly original. We see this kind of phenomenon often enough on this forum.
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| My 3 little sisters and I had a great childhood. It was stable, anxiety free, and I came out well educated. By the time I'm old enough to want kids, having a family of 6 will be unfeasible. The economics simply don't add up. And I think that's a good thing. It beats the hell out of everyone still having famillies of 6 and then having to kill each other over resources. |
Yes, there might be a problem if everyone were averaging four children. But that doesn't take away from the current crisis we have, where one and a half children will be supporting two parents. If over two generations have four children successively, that is eight grandchildren and four children to take care of two elderly. If two generations have one and a half children successively, that is only two and a quarter grandchildren and one and a half children to take care of four elderly. In other words, half the population will be elderly after two generations, as Germany is expecting to deal with come 2030.
A healthy growth rate, which would balance the suicidalness of the no growth, or the asinine planned one child system, philosophy against the kind of unplanned population boom occurring in India which will only mire the resulting children in a continuous poverty cycle and strain resources, would post a little over two children per parent. If each parent had two and a quarter children over two generations, you would have five grandchildren (and a fraction left over which we'll round out to infant/child mortality) and two and a quarter children to take care of two grandparents. That's a sizable elderly population but it balances our two needs quite well, while also assuring that there is not overdue burden on the parents.
I checked out the wikipedia entry on Ronald Wright, and thought it seemed familiar, but it turns out that Spengler was responding to Jared Diamond. I guess it must have been the similarity of Easter Island that blurred my memory. I tend to want to dismiss Wright out of hand, because he is arguing the same post-Marxist line you have repeated above, that humans are essentially driven by economy and everything else is just ideology to justify it. I find the conclusion that man is all belly and appetite to be poorly justified by history, and counter that while perhaps not arrogant, such a view is certainly narrow and runs into many problems. |
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Paji eh Wong
Joined: 03 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 8:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
We are better than animals. |
I'll give you "more complicated" but I won't give you "better".
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| However, it is still an open question as to whether we are subject to the same so-called 'law of nature' that you introduce to us above. And no, correlating circumstances accompanied by the remark that humans are arrogant does not amount to a compelling explanation of the current demographic decline. |
Yes, I think its arrogant to place ourselves above animals, above nature, to believe that we have nothing to learn from studying the natural world, and to believe that the same forces and trends that come to bear on animal populations won't come to bear on us. Admittedly, I'm no expert on this. It's an arugment by analogy. But I fail to see how someone can completely remove the ecological aspects from this debate.
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| A healthy growth rate, which would balance the suicidalness of the no growth, or the asinine planned one child system, philosophy against the kind of unplanned population boom occurring in India which will only mire the resulting children in a continuous poverty cycle and strain resources, would post a little over two children per parent. |
I think what we are arguing over here are the ideas of perpetual growth versus a managed decline.
I don't believe in perpetual growth. I don't think there is anything is nature or in history to suggest that a culture or a population can continue to grow indefinitely. People, populations, cultures all decline. Things fall apart; its just the way life work.
I see a sharp decline in the worlds population as inevitable. And since its inevitable, I'm for managing the declining in a way that provides the best possible solution for everyone.
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| I checked out the wikipedia entry on Ronald Wright, and thought it seemed familiar, but it turns out that Spengler was responding to Jared Diamond. I guess it must have been the similarity of Easter Island that blurred my memory. I tend to want to dismiss Wright out of hand, because he is arguing the same post-Marxist line you have repeated above, that humans are essentially driven by economy and everything else is just ideology to justify it. I find the conclusion that man is all belly and appetite to be poorly justified by history, and counter that while perhaps not arrogant, such a view is certainly narrow and runs into many problems. |
I posted my theory on population decline as being based more on economics than on the secular selfishness implied in the OP. The idea wasn't specifically post-Maxist because I don't even know what that means. The idea was based more along the lines of Maslow's hierachy of needs. I (a nonexpert in every way) believe kids require time, money, energy, and security. If rational parent believe they can supply these things, they go ahead and have kids. If not, they don't. While I see how religion could help with the security aspect, I thought the OP's article was misleading because it didn't address things going on in average middle class homes. People have less time, less spare money, less energy, and less certainty to expend on their kids. So they don't have them. I'm not saying an individual's decision is only bound by economics, but population-wise, all of those things have an effect.
As for Wright and Diamond, apparently they cover much of the same ground. I haven't read Diamond's book yet. Neither has Spengler, which I find kind of cheeky. I think the primary "moral" of Wrights book is that societies who fail to adapt to both outside and inside pressure fail to survive. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 1:47 am Post subject: |
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Kuros wrote:
We are better than animals.
I'll give you "more complicated" but I won't give you "better".
Kuros wrote:
However, it is still an open question as to whether we are subject to the same so-called 'law of nature' that you introduce to us above. And no, correlating circumstances accompanied by the remark that humans are arrogant does not amount to a compelling explanation of the current demographic decline.
Yes, I think its arrogant to place ourselves above animals, above nature, to believe that we have nothing to learn from studying the natural world, and to believe that the same forces and trends that come to bear on animal populations won't come to bear on us. Admittedly, I'm no expert on this. It's an arugment by analogy. But I fail to see how someone can completely remove the ecological aspects from this debate. |
Well, if you will accept only 'more complicated' and not accept 'better,' then there's little I can do to convince you that cities, nations, and civilizations are different in quality from ecological systems. However, will you consider for a moment that civilizations are more complicated than ecological systems and thus might be subject to more variables than simply its relationship to the environment? I doubt that Diamond or Wright would aver that ecological instability is the only reason civilizations collapse or decline. Obviously, sometimes nations or peoples are simply overwhelmingly conquered. Take for example the Aztecs, who though they outnumbered Cortez's forces immensely, still managed to crumble.
There are other problems, such as simple bureaucratic problems. It has been argued that the Ottoman Empire went into decline because of the inefficiency and inappropriateness of the tax code as would have needed to be applied in order to stimulate a more modern economy. A state needs to remain modern to remain competitive, if only to have the quality of weapons to defend itself.
Moreover, sometimes moral decline corresponds to the decline of the civilization itself. I would suggest that this explains at least some of what happened with Rome (although I am open to ecological explanations as forming a part of that whole), especially considering the evidence of contemporary historians, particularly Tacitus, who describe the deterioration of Roman virture into decadence and vice. People who live for their own pleasure, and who have swallowed Lucretius' Epicurianism whole, are frankly less likely to have children. Children are a lot of work (it could also be considered that they have less need for children, as children are treated more as labor assets amongst poorer/more agricultural societies).
But again, you may object to the term 'moral.' By the way, all I meant by post-Marxist was that you decided that the burden was on humans to prove they are better than animals, rather than assume it outright, as Kant and Hegel had. When Marx denied that man's ideas marked him as exceptional versus the animals, it was revolutionary. Not so much so today. That is all I meant by post-Marxist.
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| The idea was based more along the lines of Maslow's hierachy of needs. I (a nonexpert in every way) believe kids require time, money, energy, and security. If rational parent believe they can supply these things, they go ahead and have kids. If not, they don't. While I see how religion could help with the security aspect, I thought the OP's article was misleading because it didn't address things going on in average middle class homes. People have less time, less spare money, less energy, and less certainty to expend on their kids. So they don't have them. I'm not saying an individual's decision is only bound by economics, but population-wise, all of those things have an effect. |
Okay, that's a very valid point. I see what you're talking about and I agree. Here I am arguing against population decline but what am I doing about it? I'm teaching in Korea and saving money to go back and study more so I can get a better job and holding off marriage until after that (if I can). So perhaps we should be arguing less against a specific philosophy of life rather than addressing the underlying issues of why it might be that the middle class is less motivated and/or capable of having children?
But do the economics correlate with ecological necessities, or is it more tied up in society's expectation of standard of living, or does is it a cultural issue? I certainly would admit there is an aspect of ecology involved. When we are talking about water wars, certainly there is an ecological aspect. But as with oil consumption, and even with the greater aspect of water consumption (the vast majority of water used at least in the Western world is not drank), there is definitely a societal expectation of what constitutes a minimal or desirable standard of living. And I suppose that is what Diamond may be arguing, that our societal expectations do not match the corresponding ecological realities.
However, I don't want to suggest that culture has nothing at all at play here. The fact that evangelicals are still having on average larger families than card-carrying ACLU members, for example, cannot be explained by ecological necessities or societal expectations of standard of living. Nor can these two things together explain why in many poor African nations or in India why the birthrate continues to be particularly high, despite the fact that these people should know better. Again, I point above to the link I made earlier correlating women's literacy rates with lower birth rates. This seems to suggest that educated women, both more likely to rationally plan and more free, will more often than not plan their families responsibly, and if anything too responsibly and too carefully, as long as they accept secular principles.
So I guess I agree entirely with your quote above, but only want to lay emphasis on your last part, that all factors play a role. You know, actually, I think I've come closer to your side on this, and I'll have to end by agreeing with you. Does this mean I have to read Diamond's book? |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 1:58 am Post subject: |
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It might be worth the time to read Diamond. He is particularly strong on comparative world history, and, in spite of some issues I have with him (some of them are the same ones ethnohistorians raised in response to Guns, Germs, and Steel), he's still someone to be taken into account. I even think he's got something going with PBS these days, but I'm not certain on that.
I leafed through his newest publication at Borders a while ago. Now I'll probably take a closer look at it.
On Diamond's earlier take on the Aztecs (and Incas) and whether the biogeographic and ecological issues or the cultural issues were more determinant: I thought he neglected to cover the internal politics of these empires, or really even acknowledge them. (He only read the conquistadores' chronicles, so he failed to fully investigate this.) There were overwhelming biogeographical and ecological factors at play. On the other hand the Aztecs were hated by many, and some, like the Tlaxcalans, offered their services to Cortez, who adroitly exploited regional politics in multiple ways, and from day one.
Who is to say that history would have been the same or different had this or that occurred or not occurred? The fact is, history occurs only one way, and in the way that it unfolded in the Valley of Mexico (and the Andes) involved much internal dissent and opposition that went the Spaniards' way because, among other things, they recognized it and exploited it. And these cultural factors had little or nothing to do with anything biogeographic, at least not directly, and arguing that culture (or human decisions) was significant is not to argue for a racist interpretation, which is kind of what Diamond suggests, and which makes it problematic to argue against his interpretation in certain seminars (I've got personal experience on this.)
So one problem with many of the sweeping world histories like Diamond's, then, in spite of their benefits, is that they gloss over much culturally-derived region-specific complexities. (In Guns, Germs, and Steel, he even dismisses the quipu as a means of storing complex information, like history, and that issue is far from settled. What if Andean peoples and cultures developed a system radically different from everyone else in the world, who was dealing with logograms and alphabetic systems? Unitary explanations -- whether social, economic, political, or religious -- have a way of downplaying or steamrolling over diversity in human affairs.)
This notwithstanding, Diamond's books are thought-provoking, to say the least. Is there a singular explanation for why world history goes the way it goes? Is there anything we can do about it? These are great questions. Personally, I suspect it's far too complex for any singular theory to account for, if not simply unexplainable. |
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