From the time of the French Revolution until very recently, two opposing ideas about the possession and distribution of wealth have vied with one another. One has held that seeking and holding individual wealth was basic to human nature, and the pursuit of wealth should be only minimally regulated, if at all. As importantly, those who amassed wealth would be entitled to use it as they saw fit -- private property is a basic right that should always be protected, in this view. Any program to redistribute wealth would have been seen as taking it from its rightful owners.
The opposing school of thought maintained that individual wealth-seeking was not to be trusted and would lead to unfairness, or worse -- wealth could only benefit society if it was held and applied more or less collectively. Capitalism could be allowed to create wealth, but through taxation and other instruments, its benefits would be spread throughout the society. But as we know, it was often the case that the capitalist system itself was seen as pernicious, and such concepts as private property, profit, and so forth were anathema. The economy would have to be run by the state, not private interests, in order to ensure that all citizens might share wealth equally.
As we have also seen, economic systems have evolved that have successfully drawn from both capitalism and socialism. However, in the main, the economic philosophy that most rewards individual wealth-seeking (free-market capitalism) has been seen to triumph over the variants of socialism (represented by a range of governmental and economic models -- from capitalism with some elements of socialism, as in Western Europe, to the 'pure' communism of the early Soviet Union and the first 40 years or so of communist China). State-run socialist economies have shown themselves to be failures, in the main. In the West, socialist policy survives only in Western Europe and Canada, in the form of pensions, health-care plans, supports for maternity and child-rearing, etc. (though many do argue that these supports come at a high expense economically to the nations that try to maintain them; these social welfare systems may not even be sustainable for much longer in their present form)*.
*There is the example of Venezuela. However, in Venezuela, wealth redistribution is not formal, institutional, as in Europe. When Hugo Chavez leaves power, it is possible that his social programs for the poor would be altered or discontinued altogether. For the purposes of this essay, I am also excluding the examples of North Korea, Myanmar, and other such countries.
For 300 years at least, the question of which economic and social model could most benefit society has preoccupied the world. During that time, religion has mainly been in retreat. And though the long decline of religion obviously has had many causes other than economic ones, it is clear that material well-being has taken up ever more of our attention, and religious faith, while still very strong in some quarters, has lost its hold; religious life has long since ceased to be central to Western society , whereas economic life has been so ever more. One could add that atheism was the official policy of many, if not all the communist states. Secularism was one of the thrusts of the Arab nationalist movements and the modernization programs of such countries as Turkey. Some major religions -- Catholicism for example -- have been forced to modernize or face obsolescence.
Religion has not been the only traditional institution that has been threatened by the indomitability of capitalism and its social corollaries. Traditional cultures and their values have also been in retreat. Whether it is a question of the society and values of the rural United States, or the indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin, the machinery of commerce and communication has been steadily eroding local mores and cultural practices. Indigenous cultures throughout the world are every bit as endangered as the natural environments in which these cultures are frequently found.
However, over time, a resistance movement has arisen against the trend towards materialism in the world, and has become especially potent in recent decades. It is largely religious in nature, but it would be a mistake to see the movement as solely religion-based. The principle embodiment of this anti-materialist force has been so-called 'radical' Islam (but there are other groups that are in many ways aligned with Islamism in this movement, in some cases while being mortally opposed to it -- Islamism simply having the greatest number of adherents).
The Islamic world has many resentments against the Western, capitalist world (note: this essay should not be taken for support for or judgement against these resentments). Some of these are neither economic nor cultural: for example, the Palestinian question. But one of the main ones (and one that is less often talked about) is of the social decay that the bourgeois capitalist model seems inevitably to carry with it. We value the freedom of Western society, but much of the world is fearful of the cost of that freedom: crime, the decline of family life, the unclear social heirarchy, the emphasis on material well-being at the expense of spiritual integrity. We are fearful of the absolutism we see in Islamism (which is why some of us are given to calling it 'Islamo-fascism'); in some of the non-Western world, both within and outside of Islam, many are fearful of losing their religious and cultural foundations in a flood of commercial homogenization.
We now have a world-wide free market not just in commerce, but in culture. In both cases the large have an advantage over the small. But while the rain-forest tribes of Ecuador face long odds against the global culture of homogeneity, the Islamic world, with its broad territorial span and ample population, intends to put up a fight. The conflict between Islam and the West is most often charactarized as a religious one, and in some ways in may well be. But it is just as much conflict between two opposing attitudes about culture and the role it should play in everyday life. In the West, culture is seen merely as an embellishment to life. In fact the word itself is much more commonly used to refer to the arts or to entertainment than it is to talk about behavior and customs; in some of the rest of the world, including, I believe, much of the Islamic world, culture means the various traditions of a place, a tribe, or of a nation.
I think it is more than coincidence that during the same period (the last 40 years) that the Islamic world has become more assertive, evangelical Protestantism has entered the cultural mainstream, not just in this country, but in other countries that formerly were dominated by the Catholic church. And if one looks a little past the well-known stances the evangelicals take on so-called 'social' issues, and tries to see the motivation behind them, one detects that at the root they are just trying to impose order on a world that they see as bewildering, bereft of moral order (I feel obliged to say, as I did regarding Islamism, that I am in no way trying to be an apologist for any views you may associate with evangelicalism -- nor am I critiquing those views). It may also be significant that the trend in Judaism, especially in America, was once assimilation, but that nowadays, the Orthodox and Hasidic Jews -- living in separate, self-sustaining communities -- are becoming more numerous and ever more influential both in this country (within Judaism) and in Israel.
I am not in a position to postulate as to whether religions can be reconciled with one another or not. But I do think that if any one religion is hardening its stance towards the rest of the world, the true reason may be found in cultural changes now taking place globally -- every bit as much as one may find the reason within the theology of that religion. We would do well to evaluate the role of culture in our own society, and see just how much that role has been altered -- diminished -- over the years.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Population Control
Any discussion of controlling the global human population brings up a dilemma. On the one hand, in much of the world, the population is too great to allow for much more than subsistence living for the majority of citizens. And in those countries that have been able both to sustain large populations and to develop their economies relatively successfully, the environmental impact has been severe, and is being felt both within those countries' borders and outside of them.
On the other hand, the value of individual human life is not ours to measure; it should never be assessed solely on a numerical basis. While limiting population growth might reduce strains on the environment and the economy, however great these strains may be, we realize that it also would prevent individual people from being born, with all their potential for productiveness and happiness. We cannot easily deny the unborn the same right to existence we ourselves enjoy.
We know that these latter arguments are more than just ethical: they are also moral and religious ones for many of us. We would be right to consider the moral and religious facets of the problem. But if we may, let us first look at the two strains of thought that have dominated the population control debate.
Making predictions about the impact of unchecked population growth, controlling human populations for rational ends, and other 'scientific' approaches to population control were once fully part of mainstream thought. With Thomas Malthus as their intellectual father, many writers in the 19th and 20th centuries speculated imaginatively on what would happen if human beings grew in number indefinitely. They usually made dark predictions: mass starvation, irreversible environmental damage, and so forth. Most saw birth control as the most humane solution to the problem of overpopulation (though some also viewed famine and disease as a natural and ultimately beneficial control on population).
In more recent times, population growth has been seen as inevitable, and the goal has been not so much how to prevent it as to adapt to it, even benefit from it (meanwhile, population control, once the topic of best-sellers, has been relegated almost to the intellectual fringe). We are trying to devise ways of feeding the billions more people who are due to arrive, and are forecasting (if not planning adequately for) their energy and housing needs. The human-life-as-statistic of the Malthusians is out of date; now we have made a fetish of the individual will to reproduce. For example, we have become very respectful of individual cultural and religious dictates that foster larger families: it would be in intellectual bad taste to question the multiple-child family in the country with 35% unemployment and over-taxed natural resources. We acknowledge 'demographic changes' (often a euphemism for population growth), but rarely discuss our potential to alter those changes (almost as if they were weather phenomena). And just as it was once acceptable to view large human populations as burdensome, it is now the fashion to tout the 'potential' of the billions more people expected to be added to the planet in the coming decades.
Our new view of population growth is more humane than that of the cold Malthusians. But it contains disturbing contradictions. We pay lip-service to protecting the wild natural areas that still exist, but do not squarely acknowledge that adding to the current world population on the order of one quarter to one third (as I believe is forecast) will all but ensure the deterioration (if not destruction) of these areas (as it is well known, large and still-growing populations are already putting unbearable pressure on rain forests, oceans, and other critical ecosystems). Global warming may be a proven threat to the livability of the planet, but every forecast of energy needs I have seen shows fossil fuel use growing to levels that common sense tells us are unsustainable. It is uncommon to see a discussion of how population growth increases the demand for energy; instead, the rise in energy use is attributed instead (again, euphemistically) to 'growing economies', or some other impersonal force.
However, this does not remove the basic dilemma of population science that I acknowledged at the beginning. We Americans use up natural resources out of proportion to our numbers, but we would be offended if we were viewed as 'excess' population whose disappearance would aid in the planet's survival. But if our lives, our ideas, and our potential are indispensable, then so then are everyone else's.
The only solution to the problem of human overpopulation, it seems to me, is to acknowledge the sacredness of human life while also allowing that an over-abundance of it will eventually degrade the quality of that life irreversibly. At the present, these two notions are seen almost as mutually exclusive, and from what I can see, irreconcilable.
The contemporary trend is to concede that human life will inexorably multiply as much as the environment can possibly support. It is seen somehow as eccentric to predict that in time our great numbers will infringe on the very sanctity of human life that we would like to uphold. We hold simple human existence to be sacred; we might also define what it means to protect the sanctity of being.
On the other hand, the value of individual human life is not ours to measure; it should never be assessed solely on a numerical basis. While limiting population growth might reduce strains on the environment and the economy, however great these strains may be, we realize that it also would prevent individual people from being born, with all their potential for productiveness and happiness. We cannot easily deny the unborn the same right to existence we ourselves enjoy.
We know that these latter arguments are more than just ethical: they are also moral and religious ones for many of us. We would be right to consider the moral and religious facets of the problem. But if we may, let us first look at the two strains of thought that have dominated the population control debate.
Making predictions about the impact of unchecked population growth, controlling human populations for rational ends, and other 'scientific' approaches to population control were once fully part of mainstream thought. With Thomas Malthus as their intellectual father, many writers in the 19th and 20th centuries speculated imaginatively on what would happen if human beings grew in number indefinitely. They usually made dark predictions: mass starvation, irreversible environmental damage, and so forth. Most saw birth control as the most humane solution to the problem of overpopulation (though some also viewed famine and disease as a natural and ultimately beneficial control on population).
In more recent times, population growth has been seen as inevitable, and the goal has been not so much how to prevent it as to adapt to it, even benefit from it (meanwhile, population control, once the topic of best-sellers, has been relegated almost to the intellectual fringe). We are trying to devise ways of feeding the billions more people who are due to arrive, and are forecasting (if not planning adequately for) their energy and housing needs. The human-life-as-statistic of the Malthusians is out of date; now we have made a fetish of the individual will to reproduce. For example, we have become very respectful of individual cultural and religious dictates that foster larger families: it would be in intellectual bad taste to question the multiple-child family in the country with 35% unemployment and over-taxed natural resources. We acknowledge 'demographic changes' (often a euphemism for population growth), but rarely discuss our potential to alter those changes (almost as if they were weather phenomena). And just as it was once acceptable to view large human populations as burdensome, it is now the fashion to tout the 'potential' of the billions more people expected to be added to the planet in the coming decades.
Our new view of population growth is more humane than that of the cold Malthusians. But it contains disturbing contradictions. We pay lip-service to protecting the wild natural areas that still exist, but do not squarely acknowledge that adding to the current world population on the order of one quarter to one third (as I believe is forecast) will all but ensure the deterioration (if not destruction) of these areas (as it is well known, large and still-growing populations are already putting unbearable pressure on rain forests, oceans, and other critical ecosystems). Global warming may be a proven threat to the livability of the planet, but every forecast of energy needs I have seen shows fossil fuel use growing to levels that common sense tells us are unsustainable. It is uncommon to see a discussion of how population growth increases the demand for energy; instead, the rise in energy use is attributed instead (again, euphemistically) to 'growing economies', or some other impersonal force.
However, this does not remove the basic dilemma of population science that I acknowledged at the beginning. We Americans use up natural resources out of proportion to our numbers, but we would be offended if we were viewed as 'excess' population whose disappearance would aid in the planet's survival. But if our lives, our ideas, and our potential are indispensable, then so then are everyone else's.
The only solution to the problem of human overpopulation, it seems to me, is to acknowledge the sacredness of human life while also allowing that an over-abundance of it will eventually degrade the quality of that life irreversibly. At the present, these two notions are seen almost as mutually exclusive, and from what I can see, irreconcilable.
The contemporary trend is to concede that human life will inexorably multiply as much as the environment can possibly support. It is seen somehow as eccentric to predict that in time our great numbers will infringe on the very sanctity of human life that we would like to uphold. We hold simple human existence to be sacred; we might also define what it means to protect the sanctity of being.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)