Good news. My little book, In Defense of Anarchism, is about to be translated into Arabic. With the available translations – Swedish, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Croatian, Korean, Malaysian, and simplified Chinese – this should make the book available to perhaps half the people in the world or more. I have done my part – I wrote the damn thing. Now it is up to the world to read it.
My thanks to DJL for a long comment on my brief post about
the language abilities of Paleolithic humans. The comment illustrates the
virtues of actually knowing something about what you are talking about.
When I become too depressed about the terrible things
happening right now in the world – as I have been lately – I seek refuge in
thinking at length about terrible things that will not happen until after I am
dead. These days I guess this qualifies me as an optimist. But in brooding as
in marketing it is important to find one’s niche. Since everybody worries about
climate change, I have had to go looking for something else to worry about and
I have found it in declining fertility rates. I have talked about this recently
in this space but for some reason the relentlessness of the development
captures my fancy, so quite often I lie in bed at night explaining it to an
imaginary audience that has not yet heard about it.
China is a good example of the long-run problems of a
fertility rate well below replacement. China has something like 1.4 billion
people and it has been on a manic growth spurt for several decades very much
focused on infrastructure. I have read that there are entire cities in China
with no occupants, constructed in anticipation of a growing population. But
China has a reported fertility rate of 1.7 and there are suggestions that the
true figure is a good deal smaller, which apparently means that by the year
2100 China’s population will have shrunk to little more than 800 million or fewer.
What is more, the shrinkage will be accompanied by progressive aging of the
population so that a smaller and smaller proportion of the population will be
productively engaged in supporting the rest. China permits little or no immigration
but the economic complications resulting from a steadily shrinking population
are going to challenge that policy.
As I noted in earlier posts, all of Western Europe along
with much of East Asia and of course the United States have very low fertility
rates. Meanwhile, the fertility rate of the other giant country, India, is
comfortably above replacement so that the Indian population continues to grow
and there are a number of countries, particularly in Africa, where the current
fertility rate is so high that populations are ballooning.
If you put all this together with the effects of climate
change, which will force large numbers of people to vacate areas that come to be underwater, the second half of the 21st century is going to see
pressures for population migration that will strain or destroy the political
stability of a number of countries, including the United States.
The fertility rate of white Americans is now so low – a bit
above 1.6 – that in the recent decennial census, the absolute number of white
Americans fell for the first time in America’s history. Not the proportion of
white Americans but the absolute number. Because the decline of the fertility
rate below replacement in all segments of the American population is a relatively recent development, it will
take a while before it becomes manifestly obvious but it is relentless and I rather suspect irreversible, even if the Supreme Court overturns Roe V
Wade, as it pretty obviously will.
There, isn’t that more fun than obsessing about a
15-year-old boy whose parents buy him a semiautomatic pistol as a Christmas
present so that he can kill his schoolmates?
27 comments:
This is something that family-values-centric conservatives, especially Catholics, have been lamenting for years, though probably you know that. It's a central feature of their critique of Roe, the pill, and the general "culture of death" they see embracing the modern world. It's interesting that you mention climate change, since one sees more and more now the argument that having a child is morally odious (or at least "problematic") because nothing will contribute more to warming of the globe than another human using up natural resources. I'm no Catholic or conservative, but I do have two children and a third on the way. I do think there's something screwed up and overly selfish about the way our culture talks about having children, though I don't think it's the fault really of the availability of birth control or abortion (both of which I think are perfectly reasonable means of planning your family).
Incidentally, India's TFR is actually not all that high, and apparently is declining. See here: https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/251121/indias-population-has-started-to-decline-fertility-rate-below-replac.html
Climate change and its varying effects will mean migration pressures irrespective of fertility rates. My off the cuff reaction is to think that your concern about fertility rates is somewhat misplaced,but unfortunately I don't have time to elaborate rt now.
In response to Jordan:
I would be very interested to read a thoughtful discussion on a rather fringey idea in moral philosophy: antinatalism. It's one that's personally significant to me, though I almost never bring it up in others' company, and for the sake of my sanity and emotional health, I normally allow myself to indulge my suspicion that it's BS and probably not worth thinking about.
Antinatalism is the view that procreation is morally wrong. (The word means something like "against being born.") You can be an antinatalist with respect to this or that individual parent (e.g., "Bill shouldn't have kids because he's likely to pass on a certain physical disorder that will cause the child to suffer horribly"; "Alice shouldn't have kids because she's severely under-equipped to be a supportive and nurturing parent"; "Whoever's alive in 1,000 years shouldn't have kids, because the environment will be extremely unfriendly to human flourishing"); or, you can be an antinatalist with respect to all human procreation.
I am not without sympathy to the antinatalist, but as I said, it isn't something I'm ultimately inclined to accept. I have nephews, I love them and am glad they're here, and I do what I can to help out their parents, without remotely seeing it as my place to retrospectively question (let alone criticize) their decision to have kids.
However, procreation is not an ethically neutral decision; there's a "case for" and a "case against" - and IMO the latter is too often and too easily overlooked.
I'll put it this way: I would be very puzzled if someone agreed to any significant extent with, say, Schopenhauer, that life is basically an oscillation between suffering and boredom, and yet had no reservations with creating another life - essentially, in that person's view, one more vessel of suffering, who perhaps suspects from time to time that nonexistence would've been in their best interest. (And there's even a Christian version of this: Suppose your child might end up at non-negligible risk of eternal damnation. Why, then, wouldn't it have been better for the sake of your child if you didn't create him or her to begin with?)
With this in mind, in my happiest moods, I look at procreation as a touching affirmation of the value and worthwhileness of life. It's a gesture that says "What I've gone through has been good - a gift worth passing on." I'm still ambivalent about parenting in my own case (e.g. because of some conditions I wouldn't want to pass on), but it's probably a moot point, as I doubt I'll ever have to make the decision.
It all seems to hinge on optimism versus pessimism, one's estimate of the basic goodness or wretchedness or worthwhileness of the human experience. Anyway, I'd love to see others weigh in on this.
Perhaps we're spoiled. Radical population changes are historically the rule for most species including ours. Our present situation is the result of an unsustainable growth rate that began ~4 - 500 years ago. Between climate change, over population, and rising authoritarianism an adjustment seems inevitable.
Michael,
I'd say have as many children as you can afford in terms of money and in times of time/energy. If you want to be a good parent (and I don't claim to have always been one), you have to put an incredible amount of time and energy into each children.
Why moralize everything? I'm not saying that you can't live all aspects of your life in terms of over-riding moral princples, because you can, but why make yourself miserable if you want to have children and think that you would be a good parent?
Of course moral principles serve a function in regulating daily life and keeping us from
murdering and exploiting each other or treating each other with manifest cruelty, but
the tendency to moralize what once at least were seen as "normal" desires, to have children, seems puritanical to me. There is a huge puritan streak in progressive Anglo-Saxon culture. They no longer put a scarlet "A" on adulterers, but now they'll place a scarlet "P" on parents and deep down it's the same thing.
No doubt suffering under the Norman Yoke for hundreds of years left a scar on the psyches of the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, the Britons, the Scots, the Picts, and god knows who else. So let's not be too hard on them/us, please, s wallerstein.
As to the decline in populations, I was under the impression that those who study and predict the course of the global human population predicted some time ago that we'd peak at a certain point and then we'd decline back to something much less numerous. I can't see how that decline would come about other than in the ways RPW describes. I can't say I'm much worried about that. Given what we seem to be bequeathing our descendants, should we have any, I feel some regret about that.
I appreciate the response, s. wallerstein, but I need to back out for a while and process some bad personal news. I’ll continue to follow, as I’m constantly clicking around on my phone and whatnot, but I don’t have it in me to contribute right now. Thanks again, and be well.
Michael,
That's cool. Be well yourself!!!
Michael,
Accepting your invitation to weigh in on the question of antinatalism, I think that we all would agree that certain individuals should never be parents and have children. In the light of current events, Mr. and Mrs., Crumbely come to mind.
In the context of American jurisprudence, issue arises in two main contexts: (1) Can the state or federal government place restriction on the right of certain individuals, e.g., those with mental or physical genetic disorders, from having children; (2) can a parent or child sue a third party for the wrongful birth of child.
Regarding category (1), the most prominent case is Buck v. Bell (1927), in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that a Virginia statute authorizing the forced sterilization of the “unfit,” including the intellectually disabled, “for the protection and health of the state.” The factual background involved Carrie Buck, who at 18 years old was determined to have the mental age of a 9-year old. Her mother was also determined to be “feeble-minded.” She was also promiscuous, and when she gave birth to an illegitimate child, her adoptive parents had her committed to a mental institution which recommended that she be sterilized. In his majority opinion sustaining the constitutionality of the statute as not violating the Dur Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, J. Holmes notoriously stated, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” The decisions was 81, with, perhaps surprisingly, J. Brandeis concurring. There was a single dissent, by J. Butler, who was Catholic. J. Butler, however, did not write a dissenting opinion.
The decision resulted in passage of compulsory sterilization laws in several states. This trend was reversed in 1942, when the S. Ct. overturned an Oklahoma statute which authorized the forced sterilization of habitual criminals. In Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942), J. Douglas held that the statute violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, stating, “Strict scrutiny of the classification which a State makes in a sterilization law is essential, lest unwittingly, or otherwise, invidious discriminations are made against groups or types of individuals in violation of the constitutional guaranty of just and equal laws.” While sterilizations continued in different contexts after Skinner was decided, with the revelations after WWII of the Nazi sterilization program, sterilization laws became extinct in the U.S. The only cases I am aware of which have condoned the practice have involved the chemical sterilization of serial rapists.
(Continued)
Regarding the second category of cases, involving the wrongful birth of a child, they divide into two classifications: wrongful birth cases and wrongful life cases. In the former category, a parent of a severely disabled child sues either a hospital or a physician for having failed to advise the parents, after having conducted pre-natal testing, that the child is likely to be born with a disability or deformity. The parents are suing arguing that the hospital/physician should be required to pay for the expenses which will be required to care for the child. Many such cases have been successfully litigated in various state courts.
Wrongful life cases involve lawsuits by disabled children against the hospital/physician which failed to advise the parents of the likelihood of the child being born with a severe disability, demanding the same relief – that the hospital/physician be required to pay for the enormous costs involved in raising the disabled child. Wrongful life cases have been less successful than wrongful birth cases, because many courts have held that child has not been wronged by the gift of life itself. In one case, Clark v. Children’s Memorial Hospital (Ill. 2011), the Court made the following distinction: “In the wrongful life context, there is no cause of action because the child, while burdened, cannot be said to have suffered a legal wrong. … In the medical negligence context, costs incurred during the injured child’s minority are damages to the parents while costs incurred after the age of majority are damages to the child himself. … In the wrongful birth context, the nature of the harm is not that the defendant caused the child’s condition, but that the defendant deprived the parents of the opportunity to make an informed decision. The defendant is liable for all harms proximately caused to the plaintiff parents, which does not include any expenditures they voluntarily make for the support of their child as an adult.” (Note, that in the event the S. Ct. sustains the constitutionality of the Mississippi statute currently under review, the 15-week prohibition would eliminate the right to sue for wrongful birth for defects which could not be diagnosed prior to the 15-week deadline, since after the 15-week deadline abortion would be prohibited, regardless the hospital’s/physician’s negligence.)
Another context in which the claim of wrongful life arises have been lawsuits by an illegitimate child either against one of the parents, or the state, claiming that the mother was impregnated because of the negligence of an arm of the state. Such lawsuits have uniformly been rejected. As the Court stated in Williams v. State of New York (1966): “Impossibility of entertaining this suit comes not so much from difficulty in measuring the alleged ‘damages’ as from the absence from our legal concepts of any such idea as a ‘wrong’ to a later-born child caused by permitting a woman to be violated and to bear an out-of-wedlock infant. If the pleaded facts are true, the State was grievously neglectful as to the mother, and as a result the child may have to bear unfair burdens as have many other sons and daughters of shame and sorrow. But the law knows no cure or compensation for it, and the policy and social reasons against providing such compensation are at least as strong as those which might be thought to favor it. Being born under one set of circumstances rather than another or to one pair of parents rather than another is not a suable wrong that is cognizable in court.”
(Continued)
Putting aside the current jurisprudence in the United States, might things justifiably change if, as is predicted, climate change causes massive social upheavals, famine and mass migrations? Under these circumstances, should the right to procreate as individuals wish, even in the U.S., continue unregulated? Does the liberty interest under the 14th Amendment protect the right to procreate at will where the addition of individuals in an environment of diminished resources threatens the life of others, due to famine and starvation? Under these circumstances will compulsory sterilization accepted in Buck become acceptable once again?
Overarching this discussion is the general philosophical question regarding whether the continuation and expansion of intelligent life in the form of homo sapiens is a per se value that must be protected? Does the continuation of intelligent life, given the scope of the universe with its millions of galaxies, each containing millions of stars with their own potential forms of intelligent life, make a difference? Should the value of homo sapiens as an intelligent life form take precedence over that of other mammals, or other life forms, for example insects? In sum, if one rejects the existence of a supreme intelligent being to which we owe our existence, do we really matter, does intelligence and its continuation really matter, in the overall scheme of things?
I hope that your personal issue, whatever its nature, is resolved satisfactorily
'I have read that there are entire cities in China with no occupants, constructed in anticipation of a growing population.'
After Deng allowed the Chinese to own their houses, but not land, real estate capital gains became the preoccupation of the Chinese middle class.
Municipal authorities sell land leases to developers, which finances local governments, and developers sell the apartments to speculative investors, who often don't fit the apartments out, they are empty concrete shells to be flipped for profit. This has created a 50 trillion real estate bubble, but after Xi recently announced that houses are for living in and not for investments, god bless him, the bubble is in trouble. It will be interesting to see how the Chinese manage this.
Given the degradation of the environment, not only climate change but, for ex, the poisoning of the oceans with plastic etc., the air quality crisis in some large cities eg in India and China also, the ubiquity of traffic congestion in and around many urban centers, already existing migration crises, bitter civil wars, and so on, the case for not adding more humans to the population is not an insubstantial one, istm. But in many cultures the argument will be a non-starter. By the time the global population levels off, btw, the world pop will be prob in the 9 billion range, at least.
But I think Michael had Benatar's antinatalism in mind, which, as I understand it at second hand, focuses on individual lives in terms of whether the balance of suffering vs. its opposite suggests that existence is a good thing or the reverse. If in general there's more suffering than pleasure in even privileged lives, then the antinatalist case seems, at a minimum, nec. to engage with.
LFC,
I do not believe that, absent governmental intervention and regulation, individuals will make the cost-benefit calculus resulting in diminished procreation that the cataclysm caused by global warming may call for. Why? Because we already have the evidence, in the absence of the predicted cataclysm, that people in the most impoverished and destitute of circumstances do not make that calculus, concluding that given the unlikelihood that their offspring will escape the impoverishment and destitution of their parents, they yet continue to have children. Even facing the famine and misery which global warming is likely to cause future generations, the appeal of engaging in sexual intercourse without the use of birth control will continue unabated. Therefore, the question of governments imposing forced sterilization may not be avoidable, even in the U.S.
I understand that you won't be able to engage with this for awhile, Michael, given your situation, but I wanted to throw my two cents out there, for whenever you're ready to return. I wish you all the best in the meantime.
I'm inclined to agree both with you, in suggesting that the issue comes down to optimism and pessimism about the value of human life, and with s. wallerstein, who cautions against needlessly moralizing the issue. In fact, I think needless moralizing about issues like this is probably a symptom of an overriding pessimism.
A person who values human life in the way I think it should be valued will simply follow their instincts about having children. That doesn't mean they'll be completely thoughtless about it, of course -- instincts are or ought to be informed by past experience and past thinking -- but it does mean that they aren't necessarily submitted to abstract moralized tests before they are acted on. (I'm not suggesting you think this; just triangulating my own position here.) It also doesn't mean that they'll necessarily have children either. There are various circumstances that might make an instinctively optimistic person decline to have children -- perhaps they don't find a good partner, or have good reason to believe they will be a bad parent, or whatever. But if there are no such overriding circumstances, I do think that it is a natural, and as you say fundamentally optimistic, desire for a human being to want to make more human beings, and that it is ridiculous to think that reasons of so-called "population ethics" might dictate against it.
In general, I think we in the West underestimate the value of life because we are more afraid of suffering than is healthy for us. As AA rightly points out above, we see that people in states of impoverishment and suffering that are mostly unimaginable to us don't stop having children because of it. Birthrates are accelerating in places that are among the most economically impoverished in the world (e.g., sub-Saharan Africa). Climate change is likely to render our world a lot less comfortable than it was before, but that does not necessarily mean that it will make it worse, all things considered. And in any case, the climate change arguments seem to me to be arguments about how we should live (i.e., fundamentally about the evils of our hyperaggressive capitalism) and not about whether we should live (or create things who live). I grant it is a bad thing that a new human being coming into the world will use up so many resources, but that is because we've set up a world in which that is the natural way to live. Maybe the better course of action is to raise up new people who are more sensitive to this problem than we were, who understand a bit better the absurdity of the way most of us live.
AA
One reason poor people in poor countries continue to procreate is that children support parents in old age (if the parents get there). Also there are cultural factors, as I mentioned. The last time I was in the Indian subcontinent, about 25 years ago, the first or second question I wd be asked in casual conversation by a rickshaw driver, say, was whether I had children and if so how many. Then my interlocutor wd tell me how many he had. I don't want to exaggerate how often this happened, but more than once. That said, fertility rates in many countries *are* falling, and I don't want to make a lot of claims on the basis of anecdotes. I believe that fertility rates in Bangladesh, a relatively poor though economically growing country and one very vulnerable to the effects of climate change, have declined significantly in the last 20 years. I don't know offhand the fertility picture for India and Pakistan.
P.s. And one reason fertility rates have declined in Bangladesh is that the status of women has improved. The connection here is prob too obvious to need spelling out. Better access to contraception and education about it may also be playing a role.
LFC, that's also the reason the Population Bomb didn't explode. The world's population growth rate in the 1960s was around 2% which is unsustainable (rule of 72). Contraception and changes in education for women worked. When I bused around India in the 1980s every village (literally!) had a widely advertised clinic for birth control.
Largely (but not entirely) off topic...
I have just finished Ian Morris's Foragers, Farmers and Fossil Fuels? Has anyone else here read it? Comments? Criticisms? Thank you.
The question mark in the previous comment was either an error or a written version of upspeak
aaall
Yes.
(The dark side of that, so to speak, was that female children were disfavored vis-a-vis males, and there was/is, iirc, selective abortion and prob some infanticide. Amartya Sen, among others, wrote about this whole issue.)
m. proust
Haven't read it (or heard of it), but looks interesting.
> I do think that it is a natural, and as you say fundamentally optimistic, desire for a human being to want to make more human beings
Masturbation is an indication that fucking does not necessitate a "fundamentally optimistic desire to make more human beings". If memory serves, some anthropologists have asserted that in some cultures no causal connection is made between the act of fucking and the act of birthing. Therefore, it is questionable whether the "desire to make more human beings" is "natural" (whatever that might mean) as opposed to mindless biological drive to release accumulated tension or it is a byproduct of a later evolved ability to reason and infer connections.
Regardless, the pill has made it possible to break the connection entirely and consistently. Only under these modern and arguably "unnatural" circumstances has it become feasible to eliminate the human race altogether without resorting to mass destruction by violence. Humanity can be now eradicated with no suffering and much pleasure. And considering how much suffering it has done to nature and itself, why shouldn't it be eradicated?
Thanks to AA, s. wallerstein, and Jordan, for the well-wishes; and thanks to all who responded to the prompt on antinatalism. The difficult news I alluded to came as a blow, but thankfully we've got some breathing room for the time being.
Two statements in particular I'd like to see expanded on:
"There is a huge puritan streak in progressive Anglo-Saxon culture. They no longer put a scarlet 'A' on adulterers, but now they'll place a scarlet 'P' on parents and deep down it's the same thing." (s. wallerstein, emphasis mine)
"I think needless moralizing about issues like this is probably a symptom of an overriding pessimism." (Jordan)
And a small (characteristically long-winded) note to make on my part, going off LFC's statement, "If in general there's more suffering than pleasure in even privileged lives, then the antinatalist case seems, at a minimum, nec. to engage with." -
I did indeed have David Benatar in mind, among a few others - horror author Thomas Ligotti has an interesting take (see his Conspiracy Against the Human Race), as does Peter Zapffe in The Last Messiah - but mainly Benatar, as his arguments are written in the familiar language of contemporary ethical theory. It isn't quite correct (but it's almost correct) to say that Benatar's position is that we should regret our births (or that our progenitors wronged us, or whatever) on account of the fact that our lives feature more suffering than pleasure. His criteria are not strictly utilitarian like that, but also include certain considerations as to certain "asymmetries," as in the following:
(1) If we act in a way that creates more suffering than some available alternative, then our action is wrong (or, is "wrong to that extent," or "acquires a degree of wrongness," etc.).
(2) But if we act in a way that creates less pleasure than some available alternative, then our action is not (i.e., not on that account) wrong.
From here we're invited to draw the implication that the wrongness of procreation - or rather, the degree of wrongness it acquires in causing avoidable suffering - is not (indeed cannot be) "outweighed" by the loss of pleasure associated with the decision not to procreate. Procreation has some degree of wrongness, in that every new life is virtually bound to feature some degree of suffering; whereas non-procreation has no feature by which it might acquire a countervailing degree of wrongness. The decision is between an ethically neutral "action" (non-procreation), and an action with some degree of wrongness hedonistically understood - as well (Benatar adds) as some degree of wrongness non-hedonistically understood, due to the impossibility of securing advance consent from the person to be born. Or as Ligotti put it, "Non-existence never hurt anyone. Existence hurts everyone."
(And incidentally, Benatar does argue that we're very bad at estimating how painful-versus-pleasant our lives are on the whole, and that they're generally more painful than not. So he'd take himself to have a decent case for antinatalism on strictly utilitarian grounds as well, independently of the whole bit about asymmetries.)
Just trying to clarify the antinatalist's/Benatar's position. It's not my position; I appreciate where people are coming from when they say it's ridiculous.
Michael,
Glad to hear that you've got some breathing room.
About puritanism:
It's a big historical and sociological generalization, but here goes.
The puritans came from England and settled in the U.S. and maybe in other British colonies.
According to the novel The Scarlet Letter, they pinned a big "A" on a woman who had committed adultery.
Today in the U.S. they no longer pin big "A"'s on women who commit adultery, but the same puritan spirit seems part of U.S. culture. I associate it with the excessive moralism found in political correctness (or also on the religious right), but here we're talking about the left.
I've lived most of my life in Latin America and that moralization of everything is just not as prevalent here. I can't imagine anyone in Latin America suggesting that no one have children because of a preoccupation with climate change or for that matter freaking out because of what pronouns someone uses, unless it's someone who has studied in a liberal United States university. It may not be exclusively an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, but it does seem to come from the U.S. and maybe Great Britain too. Everything in daily life is moralized and subject to norms and canons of political correctness and I find that very
deadening. And like the original puritanism it seems to focus on sexual behavior, although what is sinful has changed. I'll shut up now before I venture into dangerous territory.
As long as we're making big generalizations from our own experience... :)
The excessive moralism, scarlet letters, obsessive preoccupation with sexuality - I think I see it, too, but I mainly associate it with younger people who live half their lives on social media, though it does spill out into the "real world," too, and lots of people are alienated and bothered by it. It seems to me an expression of youthful anger, immaturity, and insecurity, and the relative newness and ubiquity of social media have something to do with it as well. "Normal" (especially middle-aged and older) people and people who'd rather just get along, get through the day, mind their business without creating controversy - I don't see the puritanism in them so much. Even the Republican cranks I know have enough "manners and decency" not to bring it up in casual conversation with loose acquaintances, for the most part.
I speak of "youthful and immature" anger, but a good deal of it is genuinely righteous and well-founded anger; bigotry, greed, injustice, etc. abound, as do their vocal and adamant defenders. But on the left, there are people who (in part, anyway) want to use this as an opportunity to earn the image of righteous radical, or champion of the oppressed, or whatever, by making things into a contest to see who can be most enlightened, who can collect the most "likes" via the most clever and biting put-downs at the expense of anyone located even marginally to their right on the political spectrum... And on the right (not even the far right), there are people who see all this and exploit it to their advantage, using it as an excuse to ignore what actually is most valuable in leftist politics, to discredit it in general.
Such are my casual impressions, anyway.
Michael,
Thanks.
My experience of the U.S. is basically online and thus, I probably see much excessive moralism than I would if I were physically there on a day to day basis.
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