I think we should talk.
Yeah, that's never a good sign.
I generally don't do politics on my blog. Okay, I haven't until recently with the Sad Puppies (click tab above for more details), but this week, I need to cover something. And it shouldn't offend you, because if it would, I'm reasonably certain you wouldn't even be reading this blog. You'll see in a minute.
But I have to ask. When did life become an evil? Don't leave just yet, because this has actually become a thing, and I'm seeing it more and more as time goes on. Life is not worth living and people are not worth allowing to live. I'm not talking about a John Ringo novel where the stupid are eaten / blown up / killed in various horrific ways. No, that's a straight up Darwin Award. I'm talking about a general contempt for life and living human beings.
Don't believe me? In 1998, there was a book called Rainbow Six. I'm going to spoil the book and the video game based off of it because it's 17 years old now, if you haven't read it yet, what are you waiting for? The bad guys in that novel were eco-terrorists who figured that the world would be just fine without human beings, and if the terrorists were the only human beings left alive to inherit the Earth, then the Earth would be just perfectly fine.
Our heroes couldn't arrest these sickos, so they invaded, took them outside of their modern compound in the midst of the rainforest, stripped them all naked, blew up the compound and said "Fine. You wanted nature. You got nature. The nearest town is a week thataway. Good luck."
Fast forward to 2013, and He That Shall Not Be Named wrote a book called Inferno that Dante would be offended by. The good ending for the novel was that 1/3 of the planet had been sterilized, and, "Oh well, the bad guys have a point. There really are too many people on the planet."
Uh huh. Yeah. You read that right. The bad guy was right. It would be too much trouble to fix it, and there are too many people anyway, so screw all of them.
Let us ignore for the moment that most of Europe has a birthrate that WILL NOT REPLACE the current generation. Let us ignore for the moment that the gender disparity in China will probably mean that they will not replace even HALF of their population over the coming century. Let us ignore for the fact that forcible sterilizations are the sort of thing that were only supported by Eugenicists the world over, like at Cold Spring Harbor in the 20s, Margaret Sanger, and Adolf Hitler!
Let us focus, for the moment, on the casual dismissal of life as a good. Honestly, "A third of the planet is sterilized, oh well, too many people." Where does this come from, exactly? Where does this man, where does anybody, get off by dismissing people as problems? Because that's what the root reasoning is: people are the problem, but only the right people are the problem.
And we know where this comes from, don't we? The overpopulation myth. PJ O'Rourke pointed out years ago that if we had the Population density of New Jersey, we could fit the entire population OF THE PLANET into Texas. If we did that with the entire population density of a major Indian city, we could fit everyone into, I don't know, Utah (this was 20 years ago. cut me some slack for memory). Granted, that was 20 years and two billion people ago, but congratulations, adding an extra two billion people probably just expanded that to, I don't know, Alaska.
Short version: You want overpopulation? You're going to need a consistent birth rate for, what, another century? Another two centuries? Hell, take Malthus -- please do, and throw him in a dungeon -- who stated that population produces and grows faster than agriculture, so we're eventually going to starve to death due to famine, and a cataclysm will correct the population to planet ratio.
Yeah, Malthus. What a guy, huh?
But here's one of many problems Malthus has. Agriculture of 100 years ago is different from the agriculture of today. Back then, they needed about 20 times the space to create the yield that today's crops produce. (Yes, if everything was 100% organic farming, we'd probably all be dead already). The people starving across the planet today are starving because of economic or political reasons, be they warlords, despots, or just crappy economies. Depending on who's crunching / spinning the numbers, we can probably feed ten times the word's population right now. Even if that's grossly exaggerated, and we can only feed twice the number of people on the planet, that's still a bloody awful lot of people.
But no, Inferno states that the Earth is so precious, and human lives are so cheep, we can involuntarily sterilize over two billion people without any problem at all. And that's the good ending.
Welcome to the value of human life as dictated by a leftist of a certain stripe. A bright red, utterly insane stripe, where nihilism is a poison, but the prevailing philosophy.
Even my own tendency towards mass murder usually has a specific focus. Like politicians or rush hour traffic. Not the planet.
But, no, people are the problem. But only the *wrong* people. The *right* people will treat the Earth right, and think the right way. And the eco-f**ks are the "correct" people, and everyone else can just die.
Now, contrast that with the latest Brad Thor novel, Code of Conduct. The bad guys want to depopulate the planet to only 500 million people, but only the "right" people, the people who believe the right way, think the right things -- the ones who don't believe in nationalism, who will be in harmony with nature, the people who will breed just the right amount, the pliable, the lockstep.
Anyone who googles the name of Brad Thor can probably figure out he's not exactly a left-winger. Heck, he's of the opinion that government's major function right now is just to protect itself. And he backs Rick Perry. Take a guess what side he's on....answer: America's.
Yeah, that's never a good sign.
I generally don't do politics on my blog. Okay, I haven't until recently with the Sad Puppies (click tab above for more details), but this week, I need to cover something. And it shouldn't offend you, because if it would, I'm reasonably certain you wouldn't even be reading this blog. You'll see in a minute.
But I have to ask. When did life become an evil? Don't leave just yet, because this has actually become a thing, and I'm seeing it more and more as time goes on. Life is not worth living and people are not worth allowing to live. I'm not talking about a John Ringo novel where the stupid are eaten / blown up / killed in various horrific ways. No, that's a straight up Darwin Award. I'm talking about a general contempt for life and living human beings.
Don't believe me? In 1998, there was a book called Rainbow Six. I'm going to spoil the book and the video game based off of it because it's 17 years old now, if you haven't read it yet, what are you waiting for? The bad guys in that novel were eco-terrorists who figured that the world would be just fine without human beings, and if the terrorists were the only human beings left alive to inherit the Earth, then the Earth would be just perfectly fine.
Our heroes couldn't arrest these sickos, so they invaded, took them outside of their modern compound in the midst of the rainforest, stripped them all naked, blew up the compound and said "Fine. You wanted nature. You got nature. The nearest town is a week thataway. Good luck."
Fast forward to 2013, and He That Shall Not Be Named wrote a book called Inferno that Dante would be offended by. The good ending for the novel was that 1/3 of the planet had been sterilized, and, "Oh well, the bad guys have a point. There really are too many people on the planet."
Uh huh. Yeah. You read that right. The bad guy was right. It would be too much trouble to fix it, and there are too many people anyway, so screw all of them.
Let us ignore for the moment that most of Europe has a birthrate that WILL NOT REPLACE the current generation. Let us ignore for the moment that the gender disparity in China will probably mean that they will not replace even HALF of their population over the coming century. Let us ignore for the fact that forcible sterilizations are the sort of thing that were only supported by Eugenicists the world over, like at Cold Spring Harbor in the 20s, Margaret Sanger, and Adolf Hitler!
Let us focus, for the moment, on the casual dismissal of life as a good. Honestly, "A third of the planet is sterilized, oh well, too many people." Where does this come from, exactly? Where does this man, where does anybody, get off by dismissing people as problems? Because that's what the root reasoning is: people are the problem, but only the right people are the problem.
And we know where this comes from, don't we? The overpopulation myth. PJ O'Rourke pointed out years ago that if we had the Population density of New Jersey, we could fit the entire population OF THE PLANET into Texas. If we did that with the entire population density of a major Indian city, we could fit everyone into, I don't know, Utah (this was 20 years ago. cut me some slack for memory). Granted, that was 20 years and two billion people ago, but congratulations, adding an extra two billion people probably just expanded that to, I don't know, Alaska.
Short version: You want overpopulation? You're going to need a consistent birth rate for, what, another century? Another two centuries? Hell, take Malthus -- please do, and throw him in a dungeon -- who stated that population produces and grows faster than agriculture, so we're eventually going to starve to death due to famine, and a cataclysm will correct the population to planet ratio.
Yeah, Malthus. What a guy, huh?
But here's one of many problems Malthus has. Agriculture of 100 years ago is different from the agriculture of today. Back then, they needed about 20 times the space to create the yield that today's crops produce. (Yes, if everything was 100% organic farming, we'd probably all be dead already). The people starving across the planet today are starving because of economic or political reasons, be they warlords, despots, or just crappy economies. Depending on who's crunching / spinning the numbers, we can probably feed ten times the word's population right now. Even if that's grossly exaggerated, and we can only feed twice the number of people on the planet, that's still a bloody awful lot of people.
But no, Inferno states that the Earth is so precious, and human lives are so cheep, we can involuntarily sterilize over two billion people without any problem at all. And that's the good ending.
Welcome to the value of human life as dictated by a leftist of a certain stripe. A bright red, utterly insane stripe, where nihilism is a poison, but the prevailing philosophy.
Even my own tendency towards mass murder usually has a specific focus. Like politicians or rush hour traffic. Not the planet.
But, no, people are the problem. But only the *wrong* people. The *right* people will treat the Earth right, and think the right way. And the eco-f**ks are the "correct" people, and everyone else can just die.
Now, contrast that with the latest Brad Thor novel, Code of Conduct. The bad guys want to depopulate the planet to only 500 million people, but only the "right" people, the people who believe the right way, think the right things -- the ones who don't believe in nationalism, who will be in harmony with nature, the people who will breed just the right amount, the pliable, the lockstep.
Anyone who googles the name of Brad Thor can probably figure out he's not exactly a left-winger. Heck, he's of the opinion that government's major function right now is just to protect itself. And he backs Rick Perry. Take a guess what side he's on....answer: America's.
But that's the difference between conservative fiction and liberal-message fiction. Liberal message fiction doesn't value human life all that much or all that often. Don't believe me, just look at Planned Parenthood's horrors lately.
For conservative fiction, life is sacred, and if you're trying to be a mass murdering son of a bitch, then you have to go, if only in self-defense. Innocent lives matter. Guilty lives? Not so much.
I guess The Pius Trilogy is conservative, if only because my heroes want to save as many people as possible. I don't ask what they believe. I don't care what they believe. Unless they're trying to kill my heroes, my heroes will save them. Because that's what heroes do. They don't pick and choose who they save.
The authors of liberal-message fiction will stop and ask what you believe before they save you, if they can even save themselves. Conservative characters will simply run towards the screaming, and will have the gunpower to end the threat.
I guess The Pius Trilogy is conservative, if only because my heroes want to save as many people as possible. I don't ask what they believe. I don't care what they believe. Unless they're trying to kill my heroes, my heroes will save them. Because that's what heroes do. They don't pick and choose who they save.
The authors of liberal-message fiction will stop and ask what you believe before they save you, if they can even save themselves. Conservative characters will simply run towards the screaming, and will have the gunpower to end the threat.
Good summary of what has become for some the new religion. They worship Gaia, the Earth, Mother Nature, call it what you will, but they all believe that Man is a disease. Except of course for themselves and those of like mind. Their beliefs are naturally (pun intended) total fantasy and unsupportable, but it's religion, so logic does not apply.
ReplyDeleteAs for Malthus, you nailed that as well. His sin was to fail to recognize that technology and science were an integral part of agriculture. Of course should the eco-f**ks have their way, eliminate GMO crops, and mandate organic farming only, they might just prove his predictions right after all.
Every year an obscene amount of food goes to waste, rots, turns to trash, while people starve, and it's all due to politics, greed, and failures of distribution. And the greed is not at the production end, but rather with those foul bastiches who will rob their own people and sell the food donated by America and other more fortunate countries in order to line their own pockets.
Yes, but it doesn't matter. After all. They *care.*
DeleteGah. The freaking, stupid [mutters incoherently in frustrated rage.]
The root of it is that many so-called "progressives" are not only secular humanists, this secular humanism is underpinned by a significant amount of nihilism: we are born for no reason, into a world that exists because of pure accident, and we die without any real purpose. Thus the human being is reduced (literally) to the role of spontaneous meat machine. Just another random animal, like all the others. No real individual dignity. We are a commodity and a resource. Currently, we've been deemed overabundant. This is why abortion is practically a sacrement with modern Leftists. Gotta reduce the number of meat machine mouths gobbling up all the resources. Doesn't really matter how we do it. And if a major war, or some kind of biological or natural catastrophe were to wipe out millions or even billions . . . oh well. As long as progressives get to be in charge, when the carnage ends, it's just less meat machine mouths! A net win!
ReplyDeleteAleksandr Solzhenitsyn's conclusion was to agree with a phrase he'd heard in his youth: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.
The various Marxist horrors around the globe (these past 100 years) are a testament to what occurs when the "meat machine" thinkers are able to run governments: unchecked, and unrestrained. Hundreds of millions of dead. More hundreds of millions enduring wrecked economies and wrecked lives.
Nothing about the United States is magical. Plenty of people in the United States want us to go down the Soviet road. Oh, they won't say so. Not out loud. But they want it. They think we're mystically immune from repeating Stalinism or Maoism. The killing fields of Cambodia. Purges and gulags. It can't possibly happen here! We're good people! We're the ones who are going to get it right! This time.
For the utopian nihilists, there is always a, "this time." Screwed it up? Tens of millions dead? A nation in ashes? Ooops. We simply didn't try hard enough. THIS TIME, though . . . . this time.
If the conservative notion of government, is that government exists to protect individual liberty, the progressive notion of government, is that government exists to perfect the human condition. If we must live meaningless meat machine lives, we should at least do it free from toil, pain, privation, hardship, hard choices, suffering woe, etc. A cradle-to-grave Garden-of-Eden.
Ironically, toil and hardship are the things which build character, and provide meaning. They are the "againstness" we (as people) require, to make ourselves who we are. Unearned ease, breeds sloth, and worse. Just look at the craziness that's been birthed out of the "self esteem" era: people screaming about "safe spaces" and oh my goodness it's the worst thing ever if your college actually exposes you to ideas that make you think, or cause discomfort. It's time for a Twitter mob! Somebody needs to sue somebody!
By contrast, the children who endured the Great Depression, fought and won World War 2, took on the Communists in Korea and Vietnam, and put men on the moon.
Amen, Brad. To ... everything you said. Period.
DeleteSigh. And there are people who wonder why I stick with Aquinas for philosophy.
I realize that your "we'd all starve if 'organic production was the only process,'" is a product of ignorance. *It is _not_ true.* Much of it stems from the "I need $3 Million in equipment to 'farm,' thinking of Mega 'Farmers.'" What they _choose_ to not see, is that they _require_ 10K acres, to pay for their $1.5 Million Combines, and harvesters. They lock themselves into large payments and large acreage to pay for all that equipment. They can't/won't see that they are "chasing their tails." It's the old, "We've _always_ done it this way." Doing it in a more rational, _supportable_ way, would mean changing everything. IOW, they are afraid of change.
ReplyDeleteBy all means, take it up with my original source of information. He's not a farmer, but an information sponge.
DeleteHis name is John Ringo.
Ah, Malthusian atheists. A part(mean and just) wishes they would realize that ultimately the only reactions to that pair of beliefs that are consistent are to either 1. become a mass murderer, or 2. commit suicide. And I would argue that the mass murderer is more consistent, by removing more of the future problem as he sees it.
ReplyDeleteOf course, they don't want to appear as the nasty immoral things they really are, so they talk about women's rights instead. Of course, some of the more consistent "moral ethicists" are advocating for post birth abortion now. Moloch never had it so good.
I'll pass on the ag question for now, I've read enough to have some thoughts, but it's just too much work to provide a small historical backdrop right now, especially as Mr. Ringo's modern picture is enough for now.