Monday, April 05, 2010

Are Malthusians destroying themselves?

Someone recently made the mistaken observation, "The world has too many Malthusians, and what’s worse, they are multiplying like rabbits..." Turns out that, being Malthusians, and being worried about overpopulation and all, they have gone about the business mostly of controlling themselves and so will soon render themselves an endangered species.

In other words forget the concern some of us have had that too many Malthusians could ruin the planet. They're ruining themselves.

We have commented upon this Great Secular Death Wish here before. But the secular Cassandras are now themselves starting to pick up on it. In an article called "The Battle of the Babies" over at the New Humanist (we are assuming this means there is some improvement on the old model of humanist) they are taking note of the curious fact that when a certain part of the population decides not to have babies, its size diminishes over time in relation to the part of the population that has lots of babies:
... something about our current form of liberal secularism that contains (here’s another headline) the seeds of its own destruction. Since the birth rate of individualistic secular people the world over is way below replacement level (2.1 in the West), and the birth rate of religious fundamentalists is way above (between 5 and 7.5 depending on sect), then through the sheer force of demography religious fundamentalism is going to become a much bigger force in the world and gain considerable political muscle. Literalist religious conservatism is being reborn and we secular liberals are the midwives.
Secular liberals, it appears, are headed for the fate of the Shakers, a 19th century religious sect headed by a woman who believed in complete abstinence for everyone all the time. It was not a great growth strategy, and so the Shakers today are no more. There is a Shaker village down the road from my house. It is quite impressive, with its buildings and other fine accommodations. The only trouble is, although their doctrine gave them lots of extra energy to do fine things, someone else is now running the place.

The moral of the Shaker story is this: don't let some crazy woman head up your religious cult. That, and just remember: if you're not going to have babies, you'd better have a pretty good recruitment strategy.

In the book, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth, by Eric Kaufmann, points out that the Western liberal policy of only two children per couple (and liberal abortion laws, I might add) is doing to do them in through sheer demographics. The believers in population control (my words, not his), despite their preachy condom lectures to undesirable third-worlders abroad, are controlling only themselves.

They have one child, maybe two. Their religious neighbors have five. Give it a few generations, and the competition is over.

That the part of the population that is in favor of reproduction would out-reproduce the part of the population that is against it should perhaps have been obvious to Western liberals, but for some reason it didn't occur to them until now.

Every generation has its Malthusians--people who, like the 19th century scaremonger Thomas Malthus, believe that the End is Near for some modern scientific reason. They are the secular apocalypticists. For Malthus it was a statistical truth that within several generations, the English population would outstrip the nation's resources. It was a spectacularly mistaken thesis--not to mention being just boneheaded, and food and other production outstripped population growth in spades.

We have our Malthusians today, of course. The Global Cooling alarmists of the 70s; the Nuclear Winter alarmists of the 80s; and the Global Warming alarmists of today. Paul Ehrlich and Al Gore are just two the many Jeremiah's who derive their inspiration from him. Now we have the Alarmist Alarmists: people who are warning that the alarmist strategy is eliminating so many alarmists that they are alarmed about a prospective lack of alarmists.

It is a strange irony that the strategy of the population control advocates would eliminate everyone except the ones who don't believe in population control.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why do you always try to be cute and witty? Quit dancing and start telling everyone what "you" believe and why?

Martin Cothran said...

Anonymous,

I try to be cute and witty for those few humorless people who read my blog and like to give me preachy lectures about what I should do on it, all the time hiding their identities by posting anonymously.

And anyone who reads this blog knows that I have strict policy of never revealing my real beliefs. Ever.

Art said...

Destorying?

The laughable assumption here is that children always follow in their parents' theological, philosophical, and political footsteps.

Martin Cothran said...

Art,

Of course you have to have them before they can follow your beliefs, don't you?

Anonymous said...

A winking strawman is still a strawman.

Martin Cothran said...

What straw man is that? The one created by the folks at the New Humanist who reviewed the book, or the one created by the author of the book they were reviewing? That's what I was discussing.

Art said...

I read somewhere that 70% or so of young adults leave the church. So it's likely that as many as 3.5 of those 5 children our hypothetical religious couple will have will end up being "Malthusians".

I don't think it's the "Malthusians" that have the problem.

Martin Cothran said...

Art,

And so these 70 percent never come back to the church? Or only leave it temporarily?

Art said...

And so these 70 percent never come back to the church? Or only leave it temporarily?

IIRC, about half leave for good.