Collapsing Birthrates

Spandrell is wondering why middle and upper class people in civilized countries are refusing to breed.

I mentioned that the Torah Jews are an exception to this rule. The ensuing discussion got long-winded, and I didn't want to monopolize comments. Below are my thoughts.

"And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love the LORD your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, That I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil. And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full.Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; And then the LORD'S wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you."

We say the above in Hebrew as part of the Shema twice a day. The summary is that if you dedicate yourself to G-d, you will flourish on the physical level. If not, you will go extinct. I will leave the issue of the spiritual level aside, except to say that the Talmud says that without flour, there is no Torah, and without Torah, there is no flour. There may be a question of whether the above applies to non-Jews. In my opinion, it does-though they are not bound by the same commandments, they are bound by a set of commandments nonetheless, and it stands to reason that their reward for keeping those commandments also has a physical component. The people who translated the above, in the context of the King James Bible, would definitely have agreed.

Extinction can, of course, come through diseases, through invasions, famine and so on. However, the current situation is much more of a testament to G-d's will. With no external factors to be blamed, people are choosing extinction voluntarily. Why and how?

Rashi explains the core of the Pharaoh's idolatry as worshiping himself by projecting his own desires onto the River Nile. This is how idolatry works-you project your own wants onto a piece of wood or stone, then worship it, effectively worshiping yourself. This puts you into a narcissistic positive feedback loop, leading to extinction, with various atrocities along the way. Today's Western world has implemented a much more efficient kind of idolatry, saving on masonry and carpentry. The loop is correspondingly tighter, spiraling down faster.

This is not an unforeseen development. It was accurately predicted, then modeled in animal tests. Nietzsche described it theoretically:

"I will speak to them of the most contemptible thing: that, however, is the Last Man!

...Alas! There comes the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There comes the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself. 

Lo! I show you the Last Man. 

"What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" -- so asks the Last Man, and blinks. 

The earth has become small, and on it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small. His species is ineradicable as the flea; the Last Man lives longest. 

"We have discovered happiness" -- say the Last Men, and they blink. 

They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs against him; for one needs warmth. 

Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbles over stones or men! 

A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end for a pleasant death. 

One still works, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one. 

One no longer becomes poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wants to rule? Who still wants to obey? Both are too burdensome. 

No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wants the same; everyone is the same: he who feels differently goes voluntarily into the madhouse. 

"Formerly all the world was insane," -- say the subtlest of them, and they blink. 

They are clever and know all that has happened: so there is no end to their derision. People still quarrel, but are soon reconciled -- otherwise it upsets their stomachs. 

They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health. 

"We have discovered happiness," -- say the Last Men, and they blink."

...while drinking their soya lattes and reading the New York Times.

Then in the 1950s, John B. Calhoun modeled the Last Men in mice. He created a Mouse Heaven, with no lack of food, water, bedding.

"The only thing that was in short supply was space. This was, after all, “heaven”—a title Calhoun deliberately used with pitch-black irony. The point was that crowding itself could destroy a society before famine even got a chance. In Calhoun’s heaven, hell was other mice.

So what exactly happened in Universe 25? Past day 315, population growth slowed. More than six hundred mice now lived in Universe 25, constantly rubbing shoulders on their way up and down the stairwells to eat, drink, and sleep. Mice found themselves born into a world that was more crowded every day, and there were far more mice than meaningful social roles. With more and more peers to defend against, males found it difficult and stressful to defend their territory, so they abandoned the activity. Normal social discourse within the mouse community broke down, and with it the ability of mice to form social bonds. The failures and dropouts congregated in large groups in the middle of the enclosure, their listless withdrawal occasionally interrupted by spasms and waves of pointless violence. The victims of these random attacks became attackers. Left on their own in nests subject to invasion, nursing females attacked their own young. Procreation slumped, infant abandonment and mortality soared. Lone females retreated to isolated nesting boxes on penthouse levels. Other males, a group Calhoun termed “the beautiful ones,” never sought sex and never fought—they just ate, slept, and groomed, wrapped in narcissistic introspection. Elsewhere, cannibalism, pansexualism, and violence became endemic. Mouse society had collapsed.

On day 560, a little more than eighteen months into the experiment, the population peaked at 2,200 mice and its growth ceased. A few mice survived past weaning until day six hundred, after which there were few pregnancies and no surviving young. As the population had ceased to regenerate itself, its path to extinction was clear. There would be no recovery, not even after numbers had dwindled back to those of the heady early days of the Universe. The mice had lost the capacity to rebuild their numbers—many of the mice that could still conceive, such as the “beautiful ones” and their secluded singleton female counterparts, had lost the social ability to do so. In a way, the creatures had ceased to be mice long before their death—a “first death,” as Calhoun put it, ruining their spirit and their society as thoroughly as the later “second death” of the physical body."

"The beautiful ones." I suppose the Game crowd would see these as Betas, hipsters, herblings-and they are right. But when they look in the mirror, they see a sleek beautiful face looking back.

So, what now? Nietzsche and Calhoun have shown us the abyss. They have no answer. The brakes don't work, and we can't turn around. Without G-d, like Calhoun's rodents, we have animal natures. We can survive anything: filth, hunger, disease, extermination. But give us everything we want, and we spiral down. The Eloi into the beautiful ones, the Morlocks into the knockout game cannibals. Is there a way out?

Rav Avraham ha-Cohen Kook saw the answer. When we get to the abyss, we have no choice but to fly. Humans given leisure and plenty can't exist without G-d, and the Jews are mankind's connection to Him. This is our covenant-that we will be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. 

http://www.torahdemocracy.org/?p=1227

http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/709860/_Jason_Rappoport/04_Rav_Kook_and_Nietzsche:_A_Preliminary_Comparison_of_their_Ideas_on__Religions,_Christianity,_Buddhism_and_Atheism