Nihilism Is Not a Life Plan

Spengler’s Universal Law #16: Small civilizations perish for any number of reasons,

 but great civilizations die only when they no longer want to live—David P. Goldman (How Civilizations Die, p. 122)

 

Back in college, a number of terms came up, from literary and philosophical movements that I didn’t have the background to understand. I remember struggling with them, and just generally having a distaste for some of these ideas—particularly for the literature related to them. Among the terms were existentialism and nihilism.

Using my dictionary from that time period isn’t that helpful. More commonly today, something existential, such as an existential threat, is related to the existence of a person, culture, or nation. That thing’s very existence is on the line. It’s a matter of life or death.

And nihilism tends toward believing in destruction first and foremost. Nihilism is basically a death wish—suicidal tendencies on a personal, cultural, or national level, or even larger.

By that definition, I would say today’s culture in nihilistic. Quite literally. It requires sex combined with sterility. A species that does not reproduce goes extinct. You could say this nihilistic cult is an existential threat to humanity.

According to David P. Goldman in How Civilizations Die, “The separation of sexuality from procreation in Greek culture helps explain the terrible demographic decay that Greece would suffer during the fifth and fourth centuries BCE” (p. 123). In short, the pattern of failure to want the culture to continue has been bringing down civilizations for millennia.

In that book, written in 2011, Goldman was hopeful that America was and would remain different from the other cultures in the world that were self-sabotaging, which he details in that book. He says,

Among the large industrial countries, there is one great exception to the declinist story: the United States. If a single characteristic makes America exceptional, it is the fact that American fertility has stabilized at replacement. In other words, as Europe and Japan reach the point of no return on the road to senility and depopulation, America will maintain its population, along with a healthy balance among age cohorts. In the second half of this century most of the great powers of the past—Germany, Spain, Italy, Russia, and Japan, among others—will cease to function. A century later they will have ceased to exist. What makes America utterly and completely exceptional among the industrial countries, in short, is that it will still be here in a hundred years.

It is not that Americans in general are having children, but that Americans of faith are having children, and there are more Americans of faith than citizens of any other industrial country (p. 191-192).

A decade later, it may be that he might not be so optimistic for America. The culture of death is winning converts even among the religious.

In my religion, the culture of marriage and family remains strong. But even there, there has been an onslaught of well-meaning (?) reformers, who insist that a loving God must accept their version of morality, which would include homosexuality and transgenderism. There are several ways they’re missing the proverbial ark.

They forget that doctrine isn’t a matter of cultural pressure; it is a matter of revelation from God. Then the only question is, are we getting God’s word and understanding it?

President Dallin H. Oaks, Sunday, April 3, 2022
screenshot from here

This past weekend was our semiannual worldwide General Conference. On Sunday afternoon, President Dallin H. Oaks spoke. He is one of the three First Presidency members, who, along with the Twelve Apostles, lead and guide the Church. His talk was entitled, “Divine Love in the Father’s Plan.” In it, he said,

Fundamental to us is God’s revelation that exaltation can be attained only through faithfulness to the covenants of an eternal marriage between a man and a woman. That divine doctrine is why we teach that “gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.”

That is also why the Lord has required His restored Church to oppose social and legal pressures to retreat from His doctrine of marriage between a man and a woman, to oppose changes that homogenize the differences between men and women or confuse or alter gender.

In other words, doctrine is not going to change on this. He explains, or reminds us, that we believe family relationships are eternal. We don’t marry “till death do us part”; we marry “for time and all eternity.” The family—including posterity—is intended to continue in heaven. You can’t continue a relationship with posterity if you don’t have a relationship that produces posterity.

This is not to say that those who are infertile, or who miss the opportunity to marry and have offspring in this life are doomed. In fact, we believe that every blessing will be given to us in the next life, if we keep the commandments in this life.

But those in the current cultural death spiral are not infertile—except by choice.

The Institute for Family Studies had a piece earlier this week lamenting the current choice to remain childless, and how this is a symptom of hopelessness. Another piece on anti-natalism in the Deseret News shows examples of a couple of tweets about what a good life choice it is to have children, which were bombarded by hateful dissent.

Liz Wheeler tweeted: “Truly the saddest thing in the world is when people deliberately choose not to have children. The most wonderful, fulfilling, sanctifying thing is having a baby with your spouse. Have lots of babies.”

Liz Wheeler tweet, image found here

Meghan McCain tweeted: “The biggest and worst lie my generation was ever sold is that motherhood is a burden and something you could take or leave. But nothing in my life compares to being Liberty's mom—the sheer joy, fulfillment, privilege it is.”

Meghan McCain tweet, image found here

Neither of these statements ought to be controversial. They are simply a personal expression of joy over having and raising children. Why the refusal to allow such an expression?

Because the cult of nihilism is a religion, and these expressions are heretical. They feel threatened by our disagreement with them.

gif found here

Ryan T. Anderson, in an essay used as the forward to the book Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution, by Carl R. Trueman, describes the adoption of a non-reality-based sexuality. He says,

Whereas for most of human history our sexual embodiment was a sheer given, allowing us to unite conjugally and form families, the modern therapeutic turn inward counsels people to be true to their inner sexual desires. What was once simply self-evident, that a boy should grow up to be a man, become a husband, and assume the responsibilities of a father, now entails a search to discover an inner truth about “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” based on emotions and will, rather than nature and reason.

This turn away from evidence and the world around us to some other, inner source of information has led to an inevitable politicization:

If our sexuality is our deepest and most important inner truth, and politics is about the promotion of the truth, then it was inevitable that sex would become politicized.

He’s not describing what should be here, or even what is actually truth; he’s describing what he sees happening in this sexualizing culture. He adds,

Whereas cultures used to cultivate the virtues that made family and religion flourish, in modernity the law would be used to suppress these institutions. They stood in the way of sexual “authenticity,” and politics sought to create a world where it was safe—and free from criticism—to follow one’s sexual desires. Hence, the push to redefine marriage legally was never really about joint tax returns and hospital visitation, but about forcing churches to update their doctrines and bakers to affirm same-sex relationships.

We are indeed in a religious war.

This new religion insists on decoupling sex from procreation. It has a preference for perversity and sterility, rather than natural familial love and procreation. And it plans on enforcing its tenets on the unwilling with greater skill and intensity than any previous inquisition.

However, it is a religion without hope for a future.

As light always overtakes darkness, a religion that values life—and bringing up life in a family—will overtake a religion against life. Because, to survive requires producing a next generation to pass along a culture to. A cult that despises reproduction cannot outlast its adherents. Nor does this cult want to survive. It is nihilistic. It is by definition suicidal. So we must resist it—and outlast it—by doing what civilizations do to thrive: honor God and protect the family.