I’m planning to spend several posts on Civilization.
Specifically, civilization requires that we value the following: God, life,
family, truth, and property ownership. These ideas come from the Ten
Commandments, but they are universally necessary for civilization.
The first several of the Ten Commandments talk about
honoring God—no other gods, not taking His name in vain, etc. We’ll handle belief
in God another day, but we do need to keep in mind that any rights we have
naturally, simply for being human beings, come from God. The alternative would
be that they are granted—and taken away—by some imperfect human being(s). There’s
no guarantee in that. So even those who don’t believe in God depend on those
who do to recognize those rights.
On life, there’s “Thou shalt not kill,” or take innocent
life, murder.
On family, there’s “Honor they father and they mother” and “Thou
shalt not commit adultery,” or anything like unto it—so no sex outside the covenant
of marriage.
On truth, there’s “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” or
lie.
On property, there’s “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt
not covet” whatever belongs to someone else.
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| Civilization Sphere from the Spherical Model |
I will be mostly quoting from the Spherical Model website, the
article “Civilized vs. Savage,” which I originally wrote mostly in 2008 and published
online in 2010. I reserve the right to insert comments and recent examples.
I had planned today’s post, on valuing innocent human life, several
days ago, before the mass murders this weekend. I’d like to point out that the
Spherical Model[i] helps us get a clearer picture of what happened, both in El
Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.
The news the last couple of days has been putting forth a
right-left narrative. The evil murderer in El Paso seems to have an online
presence saying he condemns immigration, particularly of Hispanics, whether
legal or not; he’s a white nationalist, which the media call the extreme right.
This crazy evil person was also a climatist (believes humans need to radically curtail activity to save the planet) and believes there are too many
humans—a Malthusian.
Conservatives—who are about conserving the Constitution,
along with the idea that all people are created equal before the law—have nothing
to do with any race, or any other tribal group, being superior to the rest of
the human race. Racism is a southern hemisphere idea, down in the tyranny zone.
Conservatives are about conservation—wise use of resources.
Climatism, which is some combination of a pagan religion and a power grab against human technological progress by those
who believe only they should benefit from such technology while they rule over
the rest of us—that’s a southern hemisphere tyrannical idea. Malthusianism—in which
humans should feel guilty for existing and should work to prevent the
perpetuation of the species—are not only long debunked, but are part of the
southern hemisphere savagery zone, not a northern hemisphere part of
civilization.
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| screenshot from Monday news conference |
The Dayton shooter was supposedly a socialist, Democrat
voter. That puts him clearly in the southern hemisphere, where you find tyranny,
poverty, and savagery. It doesn’t of course mean all people who have fallen for
the socialist philosophy believe in mass murder.
But what we do see is that, as exemplified by these two mass
murderers, their beliefs put them far away from freedom, prosperity, and
civilization—the things we’re trying to conserve and restore.
Calling either of them left or right is at best a confusing
misnomer, at worst a despicable lie.
In addition to these two massacres, there were three
separate shootings, killing or injuring another two dozen people, in Chicago,
in a single area in a single day. This included the deaths of two mothers who
were dedicated to ending gun violence—shot and killed while they held up signs,
if I heard the story right. I think this was black-on-black violence, which
doesn’t fit the narrative of “rampant racism in America,” and is commonplace in
that city. So these killings went almost unmentioned.
It was a tragically bloody weekend.
We have a long way to go to get to the northern hemisphere,
where life is valued. But we won’t get there by blaming anything but the evil
that is inherent in tyranny and savagery and also inexplicably rooted in
certain individual hearts.
In hopes of better understanding, here’s a look at the value of life.
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| embryo image from here |
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Value Innocent Human Life
There’s “Thou shalt not kill”—with kill better translated as
“murder” or “take innocent human life.” It is a savage culture that does not
value human life, specifically innocent human life. Baby killing is savage, yet
as abortion becomes a settled fact of society, child abandonment at birth
(children left in restrooms and dumpsters) is heard of more and more. In spring
2008, while I was researching for this article, a young mother put her newborn
in the restroom trash in a Houston, Texas, hospital and covered it with bloody
paper towels. Complaints about the mess are what brought a cleaning crew to
discover the child, miraculously still alive (survived for several days). Texas
is a state where unwed mothers can abandon babies with no questions asked, at
hospitals, fire stations and other facilities. All any young mother had to do
was come in and say, “I don’t want the baby,” and she would be treated without
question, and the child would be put up for adoption. She had nothing to fear.
She was already at a care facility. Yet she put a live baby in the garbage.
Insanity? Yes. But savage insanity. She covered the baby so he wouldn’t quickly
be seen. She went back to the hospital waiting room for treatment because of
bleeding. She was carrying out relatively logical life tasks but didn’t know a
baby shouldn’t go in the garbage covered by bloody paper towels? That she needs
mental treatment is obvious. But that her variety of “insanity” is growing more
common, spreading almost like an epidemic, is also apparent. There were two
more examples in the news that April, one in a restroom on a plane, one at a
Houston high school, both 14-year-old girls, and no one apparently knew they
were pregnant.
If this insanity is spreading, then the disease is
communicable because of the decay in value for innocent human life. Even insane
behavior must occur to the insane person; if it’s inconceivable and never seen
in society, it is much less likely to be conceived of in the mind of the
mentally unstable.
That is why the insanity of campus shootings has become much
more common since Columbine in 1999, when such an atrocity became
“conceivable.” In 2007 a shooting rampage happened at Virginia Tech. It
happened at Northern Illinois State in February 2008. The previously inconceivable
insanity still horrifies, but it no longer surprises. And there’s a certain
level of rational thinking among the insane attackers, who choose a place like
a school, where they are likely to have free rein to kill multiple victims
before being taken down in their own death. They have a savage goal, and they
logically think through the ways to accomplish it. Insanity to the civilized
mind, but logical to the savage mind.
Killing of the elderly, euphemistically called euthanasia or
“dying with dignity,” is another way of saying society can’t be bothered to
care for the no-longer productive. This idea flouts both honoring our parents
and honoring life. And it is savage. Every civilized culture has valued
innocent life, and every society that has then lost that value for life has
decayed into more and more savagery.
Everywhere that euthanasia has been legalized, stories abound
of people who, in more civilized countries, could have received care to live
longer productive lives, but who in these countries are euthanized—against
their will and the will of their families[ii].
They are disposed of. This is always the result of supposedly allowing people
to have the “dignified” choice of naming the time, location, and circumstances
of their demise, something civilized people don’t actually expect because that
decision belongs to God.
Loss of value for life leads to looming demographic
disasters. Worldwide reproductive rates have been falling for decades—not
because of greater infertility, but because of self-imposed infertility.
Replacement rates for society are 2.1 children per female, producing one
replacement for herself and one for the male (the .1 compensates for the live
births that do not then grow to adulthood). Most industrialized countries, as
well as many third world countries, are well below these rates[iii].
Some people falsely believe this is a good thing for the planet, so we don’t
overuse our resources. But they fail to take into account some basic math.
There are roughly three segments of society: those too young
to be producers yet, the producers (adults in their working years), and those
too old to still be producers. In part, the elderly can provide for themselves
with pre-retirement savings, if they’ve planned well and lived providently. But
if their needs exceed their ability to provide, it is incumbent on the
producers (their adult children) to see to their care. Meanwhile, the producers
are also caring for the upcoming generation. When this is seen as a burden,
then producers have fewer children, which means that when the smaller
generation moves into the producer role, there are fewer of them providing for
larger groups of elderly plus young. And since the producers will be spending
more of their earnings on elderly and child care, they will have less ability
to save for their own retirement, so the next smaller generation of producers
will be even more greatly burdened.
The only way out of the servitude toward the non-producers is
to increase the offspring generation so that the next generation of producers
will be bigger, thus spreading out the burden. (For example, an elderly couple
with six adult children sharing the burden of their care is less of a burden
per person than an elderly couple with only one or two adult children.) But the
savage solution is to encourage the demise of the elderly once they become a
burden. Socialized medicine, where a cold bureaucrat rather than loving adult
children makes the decisions about an elderly patient’s care, tends to decrease
care options “for the sake of society as a whole,” essentially causing
premature death of the elderly. That’s savage.
[i] For a quick review of what north and south mean in the Spherical Model, see The Political Sphere Is Round.
[ii] According
to ScienceDirect, whenever physician assisted suicide is legalized, euthanasia
without consent follows. This LifeSiteNews story show the expansion of
definitions to include everyone.
[iii] I
wrote about the danger of what is called Demographic Winter here and added to that here. Recent research shows that, while it’s a
complicated question, the US fertility rate has joined Europe and other developed
countries that have dropped below replacement levels.
