December 26, 2005
HUMAN EXCEPTIONALISM
O come, all ye faithless (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, December 17th, 2005)
It’s hard to persuade an atheist to believe in God. But unless he’s the proverbial ‘militant atheist’ — or, more accurately, fundamentalist atheist — the so-called rationalist ought to be capable of a rational assessment of the comparative strengths and weaknesses of different societies. If he is, he’ll find it hard to conclude other than that the most secular societies have the worst prospects. Rationalism is killing poor childless Europe. But instead of rethinking the irrationalism of rationalism, the rationalists are the ones clinging to blind faith, ever more hysterically. At that ridiculous climate conference in Montreal, Peyton Knight of the National Center for Public Policy Research encountered Richard Ingham, a correspondent for Agence France-Presse: ‘He demanded to know the National Center’s stance on global warming. I began to explain to him that it is our view that mankind is not causing the planet to get appreciably warmer. Before I could delve into any specifics, he cut me off, shouting: “Why? Because it isn’t in the Bible? It isn’t in Genesis?”’The bit I like isn’t in Genesis, but Psalms: ‘What is man, that thou art mindful of him...? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea....’
Let’s suppose that there is no God and that the Psalmist just conjured that up out of thin air. Nevertheless, it accurately conveys the central feature of our world — our dominion over pretty much everything else out there. A couple of months back, I was asked about creationism and ‘intelligent design’. Not my bag, so I kept it short. But I did say that the Psalmist had captured the essence of our reality rather better than your average geneticist. I’d just been told that not only does man share 98.5 per cent of his genetic code with the chimp but he shares 75 per cent of it with the pumpkin. If that’s so, it doesn’t seem a terribly useful scale for measuring the differences in our respective achievements. As I put it, ‘The fact is that this is a planet overwhelmingly dominated and shaped by one species, and our kith and kin — whether gibbons or pumpkins — basically fit in the spaces between.’
This modest thought provoked Paul Z. Myers, professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, into paroxysms of scorn: Steyn, he scoffed, ‘must not possess a gut populated by intestinal bacteria. We are at their mercy; without them, we suffer horribly for a while and die.... He must not have any wooden furniture in his home, or plastic ...made from the carbon left by ancient forests.... It’s a good thing he doesn’t eat, or he’d have to excrete — without any bacteria or fungi or nematodes or flatworms, the shit would just pile up (this would explain his written output, though).’
Oh dear. All I was doing was making a simple point about the scale of man’s domination, and all Professor Myers’s demolition does is confirm it. My intestinal bacteria may indeed be doing a swell job, but living in my gut isn’t exactly a beach house at Malibu. Yes, I’ve got wooden furniture. I live in the Great North Woods and the house and practically everything in it is made from those woods. But I sit on the chair, the chair doesn’t sit on me. And as for my excreta and the hard-working nematode, who gets the better end of that deal?
In a way, Professor Myers is only taking transnationalism to its logical conclusion. After all, if one is obliged to pretend that the Americans, Belgians, Greeks and Canadians are all equal members of a military alliance, it’s not such a stretch to insist that the Americans, the flatworms, the intestinal bacteria and your Welsh dresser are all equal partners in some grand planetary alliance. Nonetheless, if we are virtually the same as a chimp, the 1.5 per cent of difference counts for more than the 98.5 per cent of similarity. The Psalmist seems to find that easier to understand than the biologist does.
Natural evolution stumbles horribly and often hilariously when trying to explain human history and human nature, which perhaps explains the zealotry with which its proponents drop all pretense to objective inquiry, deny the overwhelming evidence before their eyes and insist there is nothing intrinsically special about man.
Natural evolution stumbles horribly and often hilariously when trying to explain human history and human nature, which perhaps explains the zealotry with which its proponents drop all pretense to objective inquiry, deny the overwhelming evidence before their eyes and insist there is nothing intrinsically special about man.
Despite what the nuttier proponents of natural evolution may or may not insist upon, the theory of natural evolution DOES NOT claim that there is nothing intrinsically special about humans.
It says that there is nothing intrinsically special about how humans came to be - which is also what religionists believe.
God, after all, made the worms and ants in the same way that She made humans.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://brothersjuddblog.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 26, 2005 9:02 AM
As much as I like Steyn, he should not forget Occams Razor. There is a simpler reason for the decline of populations in Europe and Japan (simpler than his complicated pscho-theological theories).
Simply put, it's too expensive to raise large numbers of kids in a high density urban environment. What part of this are you guys not understanding?
bplus:
Cities are old and people are wealthier than they've ever been. Secularization and statism are all that's changed.
Posted by: oj at December 26, 2005 9:17 AMSomething I hear from my forty-something kids that's new to me. When discussing non-material things, they ask whether it adds value.
Having kids may not add value to many people and that's why they either only have one or maybe even none. It might be just that simple.
erp:
That's a big piece of it, and the biggest part of why Mormons will inherit the Earth.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at December 26, 2005 9:27 AM
ALL cities throughout history have ALWAYS filled more graves than cribs each year. When your entire society is essentially one big city (like western Europe or Japan) a population drop is inevitable. Wealth is relative, with it comes increased costs for child raising education, etc.
Posted by: bplus at December 26, 2005 10:09 AMSilly, of course, we have so much more disposable wealth than humans have ever had it's not even worth taking that seriously--we spend a fraction on the necessities that anyone ever has.
Where else has population ever declined in absolute terms exclusively as a function of reproduction decisions? Umm, nowhere.
Posted by: oj at December 26, 2005 10:12 AMbplus:
My partime assistant is a single mother of four who works about thirty-five hours a week at two different jobs at a modest hourly wage with no benefits. Based upon that, standard child support, some generous tax credits and refunds and a little (not a lot) of family help, her kids are all clothed, fed, sheltered in her small home (owned with a mortgage), well-equipped with electronic toys and occupied with activities from horseback riding to skiing to skating. She drives a small SUV with lease payments, is otherwise debt-free and actually runs a small monthly surplus, even though she smokes--her one and only self-indulgence. The difference is her steely determination and self-denial and her unwavering commitment to them.
The idea that we can't "afford" large families just defies common sense.
Posted by: Peter B at December 26, 2005 10:32 AMOJ, No amount of disposable income will conjure living space out of thin air. Just how many people do you insist that the Japanese cram into their Home Islands? How much square footage will you alot per individual?
Peter, Does your assistant pay a small fortune each month for a one room rabbit warren apartment in a high density urban area? Since she drives an SUV my guess is she doesn't live in high population density urban area like the Japanese. Apples and oranges.
Posted by: Bplus at December 26, 2005 10:59 AMGuys, spend your days being crammed into a commuter train, walking streets crammed shoulder to shoulder with people, and living in a one room rabbit warren apartment - then tell me how many kids you want.
Posted by: bplus at December 26, 2005 11:01 AMbplus
my guess is she doesn't live in high population density urban area like the Japanese
Good guess. Actually she lives in a high population density urban area like the Canadians.
But I see your point. Ya' gotta choose between families and one room rabbit warren apartments. Life's like that.
My Church family (evangelical protestant, 200 plus regular participants) average five children per family. All home school; not a requirement; birds of a feather The men are loggers, mail carriers, IT professionals, stockbrokers, construction workers, etc. Our religious beliefs dictate life style including reproductive choices.
Posted by: tgn at December 26, 2005 11:35 AMtgn, you say what the men in your congregation are, but what of the women? What are they?
Posted by: erp at December 26, 2005 12:44 PMb:
Their population density isn't prohibitive, yet their population is falling. When you love yourself to the exclusion of all else it's easy enough to make up reasons not to have kids.
Posted by: oj at December 26, 2005 12:54 PMAnd there is yet more to it.
Having children is a committment to fight and to compass a future in which one's children and children's chilren are ready to fight, for only the dead have seen the last of war.
We alway hope that it will not come to blows, not we understand that the heart of man is wicked.
Yes, consumerism contributes to the actualization of the "virtue of selfishness"--to men who will not fight and women who will not bear. More is needed to produce the anomie of empty cradles, however.
It comes from sin, from hatred of all that is other, and from ignorance of one's end.
Posted by: Lou Gots at December 26, 2005 3:12 PMerp:
Mothers, teachers, helpmates. Greatly honored in that indispensable role.
Posted by: tgn at December 26, 2005 3:53 PMThe US is hardly a fount of procreativity, we're barely ahead of the Eurpoeans, and barely above replacemenbt level fertility. Subtract the contributions of recently arrived immigrants, and we are in the same boat, OJ's schaudenfreude notwithshanding.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at December 26, 2005 4:07 PMU.S. fertility, sans immigrants, is still 50% higher than that of Italy, Poland, Germany...
While (barely) sub-replacement, it's still much better than "in the same boat as Europe".
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at December 26, 2005 4:39 PM
Michael,
Check this out http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p20-555.pdf
Based on the number of children
ever born to women 40 to 44 years
old in 2004, Hispanic women, with
an average of 2.3 births, were the
one group that exceeded the level
required for natural replacement of
the population (about 2.1 births per
woman). Black and non-Hispanic
White women 40 to 44 years old
had fertility levels
replacement level, ranging from
about 1.8 to 1.9 births per woman.
Our boat is sinking, just not as fast.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at December 27, 2005 2:08 AMThe quote should say Black and non-Hispanic
White women 40 to 44 years old
had below fertility levels replacement level
Lets try this again: The quote should say Black and non-Hispanic White women 40 to 44 years old
had fertility levels below replacement level
If there's 5 billion people on the earth now, wouldn't the earth (humanity) be better off if 50 years from now, there were only 4 billion people?
Posted by: AllenS at December 27, 2005 7:49 AMAllen: People are the only resource. Of course, it's silly for us to keep them all on Earth ...
Posted by: David Cohen at December 27, 2005 9:26 AMThere are six billion people now.
If by 2050 all nations on Earth practiced some form of democratic capitalism, even near-socialist forms like modern France and the Scandinavia of a few decades back, then the Earth could comfortably carry at least 60 billion people, a number very unlikely to be reached until someone discovers immortality juice.
Robert:
Yeah, and Japan, Italy, and Poland have fertility levels ranging from 1.1 to 1.3.
In any case, there's anecdotal evidence that today's 40 - 44 y.o. fertility level is below the fertility level of the age cohort that will be 44 in 2020, so our boat may not be sinking at all.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at December 28, 2005 6:19 AM