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.

Why Civilizations Die: Part III

This series on David P. Goldman’s book How Civilizations Die (And Why Islam Is Dying Too) starts with Part I on population decline, and Part II on the connection between secularization and population decline. Today we’ll cover what works for a lasting civilization.

Goldman proposes that religion is important in “culture,” because “culture” is about dealing with our own mortality.

Why have so many branches of the human family lost the will to live? They have lost the cultural resources that enabled them to cope with their own mortality. From awareness that we will die arises culture—the capacity to order our behavior consciously rather than by instinct. Culture is the stuff we weave out of the perception of immortality, the bridge between generations. Every echo of our earthly footsteps will die out unless those who follow us inherit more than our genes. To speak of a “search for meaning” is pointless unless that “meaning” endures beyond our lifetime. With sad frequency, ethnic groups will die rather than abandon their culture. And their culture is failing many peoples in the modern world (p. 20).

Religion, Goldman says, isn’t just an aspect of sociology; it is the primary factor; he uses the word theopolitics. But there is a difference between pagan religion and the covenant God of Jews and Christians. In pagan religions, faith in their god(s) is tentative, depending on success. As Goldman puts it,

Pagans worship their own image in the person of gods who are like them, only better. Pagan faith is everywhere and always fragile, according to Spengler’s [his online columnist name] Universal Law #15: When we worship ourselves, eventually we become the god that failed. The function of pagan gods is not to redeem us from death, but to bring us success. Pagan gods do not love men and women…. Absent success, pagan societies lose their faith; the religion of the ancient world is a carnival-parade of new gods introduced by winners to replace the failed gods of the losers, as defeated tribes were absorbed into their conquerors (p. 122).

He adds, in Spengler’s Universal Law #19: “Pagan faith, however powerful, turns into Stygian nihilism when disappointed.” In the modern world, pagan gods may not be the same as in ancient religions; they might be the tribe, the culture [Kultur was the word used in Nazi Germany], or self. All are fallible, and therefore will eventually fail.

But the Judeo-Christian God makes a covenant with man. “The American founding notion of ‘inalienable rights’ stems from the Hebrew concept of covenant: a grant of rights implies a Grantor, and an irreversible grant implies a God who limits his own sovereignty in covenant with mankind” (p. 80). This difference means that God isn’t available depending on specific seasonal outcomes, but is there throughout life and into eternities. And there is hope for peace and happiness beyond this life if we obey God’s laws in this life.

Goldman spends a fair amount of time explaining why he sees the Muslim God as more “pagan” than “covenant.” He says the idea that Allah would limit his powers for the sake of a human is repugnant to Muslims. They do not have a relationship with their creator; they rather simply try to appease and hope for good fortune. But their behavior doesn’t affect what happens; all is Allah’s will. I do not understand Islam enough to know whether this assessment is true. But the evidence of cultural failure when moving from traditional (agrarian) societies to modern (urban) societies is evident in the Muslim world as it is in Europe and Japan.

But America hasn’t failed. Its fertility rate holds steady at replacement. Israel is another exception. What makes the difference? Faith.

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. According to a 2002 survey by the Pew Research Institute, 59 percent of Americans said that religion was important to them, against 11 percent in France, 21 percent in Germany, 27 percent in Italy, 33 percent in Great Britain, and 36 percent in Poland. In both Europe and America, people who practice a religion have far more children than those who do not. It’s just that there are far more Americans than Europeans practicing a faith (pp. 191-192).

Here’s some of the data comparing religion among childless vs. large families:

·         33% of childless families say they are not religious; only 12.5% of families with 4+ children are not religious.

·         41% of childless families say grace before meals; 62% of families with 4+ children say grace.

·         45% of childless families “strongly agree” that there is a “God who watches over me”; 80% of adults with four children “strongly agree.”

·         50% of families that never take part in religious activities have no children, but only a third of families with 3+ children do not. (p. 194).

There are differences among different religions in America, even among different Christian religions. If we separate them into “mainline” and “fundamentalist” Christians, we see some patterns. Fundamentalists who attend services weekly have a fertility rate of 2.7 (27% higher than the national average). But mainline Christians, such as Episcopalians and Presbyterians, average 1.3 children—the same as failing European societies.

American Jews show similar differences. “Nine-tenths of American Jews belong to the liberal denominations (Reform and Conservative) or to none at all. A generation ago, the Orthodox Jews seemed like a vanishing remnant of old country life. An observer looking at the configuration of American religion circa 1970 well might have forecast the end of faith in America, for the churches and synagogues that embodied faith at that moment in time were in decline. But the fervor of the evangelical Protestants, Pentecostals, and others [Mormons] has filled the vacuum left by the mainline denominations, and Jewish Orthodoxy is growing rapidly in part by attracting adherents from liberal denominations, but mostly through its own fecundity. Although traditionally observant Jews remain a small minority in terms of overall numbers, a third of synagogue-going Jews below the age of thirty attend Orthodox services (p. 196).

In other words, growing by attrition includes some conversion, but it is fueled by large families. Similar growth is happening in Israel. Among secular Jews, fertility has increased in a generation to 2.6, the highest in the industrial world. Ultra- Orthodox Jews have a fertility rate of 8.5, bringing the national fertility rate to 2.9. Meanwhile, “Arabs births in Israel remain steady at around 39,000, while Jewish births rose from 80,000 in 1994 to 120,000” in 2009. In another 60 years (two generations), Israel’s population will be larger than Poland. Poland’s median age will be 57 (as many older as younger), while Israel’s will be 32 (p. 201). And in the wake of this fertility by more orthodox segments of society, the shift of the culture as a whole is toward orthodoxy. The desire to live, and to have the culture live on, is strong. It bodes well for that little nation.

But, back to America. If Europe was made up of Christian nations originally, why have they failed to remain Christian, and then also failed to continue the will to have their individual cultures live on? And why, facing the same modern world, has America remained Christian at its core? Goldman says,

America is different because it was founded to be different. America remains a Christian nation because it overcame the centrifugal forces of ethnic rivalry through a radical and unprecedented device: the creation of a new country founded on a proposition—rather than commonality of language, race, or history. At the moment of Europe’s most catastrophic failure, people of faith chose to risk everything to found the country that became the United States of America.

The proposition that America was founded on is that our Creator has granted us unalienable rights, among them: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (property, and our own choice of ways of seeking it). And the Bill of Rights spells out what was understood at the founding, that God granted us freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to protect ourselves, freedom from oppressive government. We do not delegate to government powers beyond what is necessary to secure our rights.

The principles are eternal. They are based on promises from an unchanging, unfailing Creator. Unlike civilizations that base their meaning on love of something ethnic or otherwise ephemeral, the proposition will not fail. Only people fail in their understanding, and in their desire to value—to love—the covenant with God.

Goldman points out that we cannot export what we have in America, because it requires Americans—people who love the covenant with God. What we can do, and have done, is “evangelize,” or tell the world about the freedom concepts. Then, as has always happened, people select themselves out of the world to join the American covenant by immigrating, or to develop their own covenant based on God-given rights, as Israel has done.

This leads to a fair amount of foreign policy discussion. Goldman is persuasive and logical, but I don’t understand enough yet to know whether I can fully agree with his “therefore, we must” conclusions. Still, there is enough here to keep a person thinking a long time. And especially there is a lot that is hopeful about the long-time survival of the America that we love.

Why Civilizations Die: Part I

At Spherical Model, I propose that civilization requires certain things to thrive: belief in God, who grants us unalienable rights, and therefore obedience to God’s law; and in order to perpetuate the belief and train in the civilized behavior, families are the basic unit and must be honored and nurtured. My way of organizing the ideas may be unique, but these beliefs about civilization are more widely understood. So when I hear a book title like How Civilizations Die, my interest is piqued, to see if this supports my thesis or adds additional insight.

How Civilizations Die(And Why Islam Is Dying Too) came out just last year. The author is David P. Goldman, online columnist “Spengler,” whom I admit I was not aware of (read an explanation of his column themes here ). The original “Spengler” authored the pessimistic work The Decline of the West, so Goldman took the name in irony. Sometimes with such a book, I end up having to study and reread, and write down quotes. This is one of those.

It does indeed support my basic Spherical Model thesis about civilization. But while I mainly outline the positive requirements for civilization, he covers the much broader subject of what doesn’t work, and along the way reveals what works. There’s a lot in here, and I’m still developing how to write about it, but I think I will spend two or three blog posts on it.

He describes his theme as following the direction of German-Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig, and then giving it broader application: the mortality of nations and its causes, Western secularism, Asian anomie [breakdown or loss of social norms, uprootedness], and unadaptable Islam.

I think I will simplify somewhat. Here are his basic themes:

·         Population decline is the identifying symptom of a culture in decline.

·         Culture declines when it secularizes.

·         Culture decline is inevitable if culture is formed on the wrong basis.

o   Ethnicity, location, and history are the wrong bases for culture.

o   Belief in God-given individual rights is the right basis. 

Population Decline

Goldman pulls no punches. This is from the introduction:

As a matter of arithmetic, we know that the social life of most developed countries will break down within two generations. Two out of three Italians and three of four Japanese will be elderly dependents by 2050. If present fertility rates hold, the number of Germans will fall by 98 percent over the next two centuries. No pension and health care system can support such an inverted population pyramid (p. ix).

I’ve been interested in population decline for quite a while, and have occasionally written on it. But Goldman presented not only a lot of specificity, but also information I didn’t have before. I was unaware, for example, that much of the Muslim world is experiencing a plunge in fertility rates. Here’s the Iranian situation for example:

Today there are more Iranians in their mid-twenties than in any other age bracket. But they are not reproducing. An educated twenty-five-year-old Iranian woman today probably grew up in a family of six or seven children, but will bear only one child. The consequences will be catastrophic. Today there are nine Iranians of working age for every elderly dependent. By 2050, when the bulge in Iran’s population will be at retirement age, there will be more Iranians in their mid-sixties than in any other age bracket—seven elderly dependents for every ten working Iranians. The country produces just $4,400 per capita [adjusted constant dollars], about a tenth of America’s GDP, and most of that comes directly or indirectly from oil and natural gas reserves—which are running out.

It’s already too late to fend off the population decline…. Aging populations present a danger even to rich countries with well-funded public pension systems. For poor countries with a primitive social safety net or none at all, a graying society will be a disaster (p. 2).

The speed of the fall of fertility in the Muslim world is startling. Worldwide fertility has fallen over half a century from 4.5 children per woman to about 2.5. But in the Muslim world in the last fifteen years, the rate has fallen two to three times faster: Iran by six children per woman, Turkey by five, Pakistan by a little more than three, and Egypt and Indonesia both by four.

The few Muslim pockets retaining fertility are those with higher illiteracy. Another factor is religious practice—more frequent attendance at the mosque equals higher fertility. In short, they retain high fertility if they remain in a traditional Muslim world and have not entered the modern world. But remaining outside the modern world also means being unable to employ and feed the population. And that’s a serious problem, but it’s worse for those with higher literacy: Iran, Turkey, Tunisia, and Algeria. There the lack of children means the lack of hope for a future.

Goldman warns, “Whereas Europe tends toward pacifism because it knows it has nothing to gain from aggression, Iran tends toward belligerence because it knows it has nothing to lose” (p. 7).

I am disturbed that higher literacy tends to correlate with lower fertility. Education is a good thing, in itself. So the other factor, faith, must also be significant. In just about all the ways you can think of “faith,” Goldman says, “Demographic winter arises from a crisis of faith” (p. 16): loss of adherence to a specific religion, loss of faith in one’s culture, loss in faith in personal or national purpose and value.

We’ll focus more on faith in the next couple of posts. But there’s one more factor to look at regarding demographic demise: economics. Somewhere during the past century children changed from being an economic asset to being a cost. Some of this is a shift from rural farm labor to urban labor.

We used to ask questions like, “How many children do I need to help me work and then support me in my elderly years?” The answer on a subsistence farm is five. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when life expectancy was lower, that was equal to the number needed to keep the population stable. And it was how many children women bore in 1950, when 70% of the world lived in farming communities. In 1800 90% of Americans lived on farms, and women bore an average of seven children. By 1900 only 50% lived on farms, and fertility had fallen to four children per woman. In 2000 US fertility dropped to two.

People have stopped thinking of children as an economic asset. We don’t use them for child labor, and we don’t expect them to directly care for us in our old age—that has shifted to a collective care. In other words, our children pay a rising portion of their wages to the government, which doles out elderly care as it sees fit. So there is a disconnect between the number of children an individual has and the amount of care he receives in old age.

The disconnect means there is no incentive to personally have more children. We look at the quarter million dollars it costs to raise a child, and think about whether we would prefer to spend that income on ourselves instead. The only social reason to have children who contribute to collective elderly care is altruism; there is incentive to freeload.

Those who have a “faith” reason for having children, however, still have them. On the individual and national/cultural level, people who believe only in themselves fail to find something worth caring enough about to reach into the future.