What, basically, persuades people not to have babies even when they have the political, social and economic stability to do so? Among the eras and nations where this phenomenon occurs or occurred one basic characteristic stands out: the loss of a transcendent future. What I mean by "transcendent" is some ideal or love or hope or faith that rises above the interests of the self, the practicalities of expected income, the security of predictable outcomes, and the lifetime of the individual. What I mean by "future" is that it is an ideal, love, hope, or faith that extends beyond the present and is not satisfied with an instantaneous and eternal reward in the now....
Culture and the Demographic Crisis, Frederick Turner, TCS Daily
For those convinced that only wackos like Pat Buchanan talk about population trends, this article on TCS Daily should be a fine tonic. Turner, a futurist, social commentator, scientist and epic poet, is hardly one of Buchanan's friends. But, as he pitches his idea, he throws what seems like an unhittable curveball.
The Martian might well recognize our need and thirst for meaning, as a linguistic species, but might well ask why the human race had not adopted a sensible position like secular humanism or existentialism. In such views the meaning of things is rooted in human life or experience itself, where in Keats' words, "Life's self is nourish'd by its proper pith".
Only after a study of the evolutionary history of the species would the Martian come to the shocking realization that the reason such sensible, inexpensive and prudent views did not prevail across the globe was that every society that adopted them had died out from lack of natural increase. He would note that all the cultures of the present day that had taken the intelligent position on meaning were undergoing demographic collapse and would, in geological time, be extinct tomorrow...."Culture and the Demographic Crisis," Turner, continued...
Powerful stuff and hardly deniable. After a certain number of repetitions, we can take for granted that patterns, even on so large a fabric as history, will repeat themselves. Watching the current "Manhattanization" of Brooklyn, which includes a futureless, relativistic, faithless, boutique leftism, the writer knows exactly what a barren generation is going to leave us with -- empty houses filled with designer furniture and worn-out iPods. He's right in turning aside all the nonsense about lead poisoning or other ecological messes. Kudos to Turner for taking this approach instead of Buchanan's hysterical views of competing races.
Today, however, making this case successfully may be harder for writers like Turner than it has been for Buchanan. The latter's arguments are built from appeals to irrational fears about the other. Turner's arguments go directly at what's looking at us in the mirror. That's much more threatening, not to mention reasonable. Also, it's hard to make historically-founded arguments to contemporary audiences. Why?
The words fall like autumn leaves from deaf ears, especially among products of American education, because history isn't taught there any longer. We get the endless now of the mall and the college dormitory instead. We get multicultural "history" and its repetitions of the old fool's nonsense that judgment is nothing more than an arbitrary decision about equally valid interpretations of experience. We get sometimes witty, but always bleakly cynical, denunciations of religious faith. Some very smart people do this, enlisting the blacklisting techniques of older, far more savage politics. Look at Dawkins with his advocacy of an organization of "Brights," i.e., those who don't believe in God, with its use of labeling, segregation of certain kinds of people, and implicit presumption of the superiority of the likeminded, and the inferiority of the faithful. Goebbels would have applauded the rhetoric as well as the idea.
This odd, massively destructive pedagogy seems designed to blind, not to educate. In its lessons, what was once held certain, that it's not possible to go forward without knowledge of where we've been, is held as a belief for old fogeys unwilling to let go of their power -- a variation on "dull" religious faith.
As Turner suggests, in choosing to blind their students, professors and mentors who pursue this pathological pedagogy have left their prodigies defenseless and,more significantly, uninterested in investing in the future through children. (Another aspect of 'Manhattanization'..., the replacement of family boroughs with an infinite club scene.) Graduates have been left standing at the shoreline, eyes tight shut, hands pressed over their ears, and the thought in each mind that 'I have seen the light.' Senseless, they cannot assess hurricane winds as coming from a storm.
Fortunately, Turner's smarter than the average ideologue. Demographics is wildly irregular in the United States, with few children being born in expensive big city boroughs, but quite a few being born to both native Red staters and immigrants. America is not Rome.
But for those who have fallen for the weird pedagogy offered in those expensive boroughs, to twist the old phrase, God won't help those who won't help themselves (or are prevented from doing so). To be heard, writers like Turner may have to reach out and slap someone. Of course if he does that, he'll be sued for child abuse, even if, as is so often the case in the developed world, the child is over 21.
Luther
No comments:
Post a Comment