Frank Furedi, the British sociologist who has already established a bit of a record for trashing doomongering of various types, lays into what he sees as the misanthropy of so many of today’s glum authors. I cannot do justice to it in one short comment, so make yourself a coffee or pour your favourite alcoholic beverage, sit back, and enjoy:
Human beings are not angels; on a bad day they are capable of evil deeds. But the very fact that we can designate certain acts as evil shows that we are capable of rectifying acts of injustice. And on balance we aspire to do good. Contrary to the fantasies of romantic primitivism, civilisation and development have made our species more knowledgeable and sensitive about the workings of nature. The aspiration to improve the conditions of life – the most basic motive of people throughout the ages – is one that has driven humanity from the Stone Age through to the twenty-first century.
If believing in the human potential is today labelled ‘anthropocentrism’ and ‘speciesism’, then I wholeheartedly plead guilty to subscribing to both of those views.
Hat-tip: Ronald Bailey at Reason’s blog. Bailey is also a profound techno-optimist with little time for the zero-sum economics or mentality of the latter-day Malthusians that Furedi hammers. This book is worth adding to your reading list. (As if I did not have enough, Ed).
That is an inspiring essay. I do wish that those people who advocate a massive reduction of Earth’s population would show moral leadership and go first!
This squares very much with what I used to tell my B schools students who had been brainwashed into thinking by some of their other profs that the world consisted of the exploiters and exploited, the winners and the losers and oh lest we forget the finite pie!
I used to tell them that if that were indeed the case civilization as we know it would not have advanced past the Me Tarzan, you Jane era.
You only have to dredge up a few shining examples of mankind’s benefactors who exploited noone and whose ingenuity and creativity left a legacy of good and progress in their wake to counter the gloomster mantra.
Good to hear there are others with far more clout than me preaching to the mob.
This squares very much with what I used to tell my B schools students who had been brainwashed into thinking by some of their other profs that the world consisted of the exploiters and exploited, the winners and the losers and oh lest we forget the finite pie!
I used to tell them that if that were indeed the case civilization as we know it would not have advanced past the Me Tarzan, you Jane era.
You only have to dredge up a few shining examples of mankind’s benefactors who exploited noone and whose ingenuity and creativity left a legacy of good and progress in their wake to counter the gloomster mantra.
Good to hear there are others with far more clout than me preaching to the mob.
There is a pervasive strain of self hatred which underlies much of the doom and gloom crowds’ repeated pronouncements that humanity, and the Earth itself, are tottering on the brink of catastrophe.
Lonborg has very succinctly described “The Litany”, the list of “crimes” humans have and are committing against the environment which, when examined by careful scientific inquiry, turn out to be utter rubbish.
It is no accident that those who so fervently believe in the “viral” nature of human kind are so eager to impose controls on humans for their own good, or, in the more rabid instance, seriously propose that the population be reduced to 100 million. What is supposed to happen to that surplus 6-7 billion people is left a wee bit vague, but one can assume it wouldn’t be pretty.
I have been listening to hysterical predictions of imminent disaster all my life.
Religious prophets predicting armageddon and the second coming.
Political doomsayers predicting economic collapse, nuclear war, or ecological disaster.
Social theorists predicting the devolution of society into armed camps living at a bestial level and preying on each other a la the Manhatten prison colony in “Escape From New York”.
Every time the rapture doesn’t come, the collapse doesn’t happen, the ice age doesn’t ice, the famine doesn’t occur, the bottom doesn’t fall out and the sky doesn’t fall in, all the doomsters just shrug, go back into their little doom studying holes, and then pop up a little later with a new prediction, a new date, a new catastrophe just waiting in the wings.
It’s like a never ending game of “7th Day Adventist”. Whenever the date of Jesus’ return goes by, and no Jesus, well, let’s just re-figure those dates, let’s re-examine those scriptural clues—oh, my, what do you know, it’s really going to be ten years from now. It’s all explained here in my new book, on sale in the vestry.
There is an obvious question to be asked: If we’re all really on the Titanic, and it’s time to get in the lifeboats because the ship is going down, qui bono?
Who benefits if things are so bad there is no option except to sit down, shut up, and do as the captain says?
I would hazard a guess that the beneficiary of that approach is not the advocate for individual liberty.
So, again, qui bono?
There is a pervasive strain of self hatred which underlies much of the doom and gloom crowds’ repeated pronouncements that humanity, and the Earth itself, are tottering on the brink of catastrophe.
Lonborg has very succinctly described “The Litany”, the list of “crimes” humans have and are committing against the environment which, when examined by careful scientific inquiry, turn out to be utter rubbish.
It is no accident that those who so fervently believe in the “viral” nature of human kind are so eager to impose controls on humans for their own good, or, in the more rabid instance, seriously propose that the population be reduced to 100 million. What is supposed to happen to that surplus 6-7 billion people is left a wee bit vague, but one can assume it wouldn’t be pretty.
I have been listening to hysterical predictions of imminent disaster all my life.
Religious prophets predicting armageddon and the second coming.
Political doomsayers predicting economic collapse, nuclear war, or ecological disaster.
Social theorists predicting the devolution of society into armed camps living at a bestial level and preying on each other a la the Manhatten prison colony in “Escape From New York”.
Every time the rapture doesn’t come, the collapse doesn’t happen, the ice age doesn’t ice, the famine doesn’t occur, the bottom doesn’t fall out and the sky doesn’t fall in, all the doomsters just shrug, go back into their little doom studying holes, and then pop up a little later with a new prediction, a new date, a new catastrophe just waiting in the wings.
It’s like a never ending game of “7th Day Adventist”. Whenever the date of Jesus’ return goes by, and no Jesus, well, let’s just re-figure those dates, let’s re-examine those scriptural clues—oh, my, what do you know, it’s really going to be ten years from now. It’s all explained here in my new book, on sale in the vestry.
There is an obvious question to be asked: If we’re all really on the Titanic, and it’s time to get in the lifeboats because the ship is going down, qui bono?
Who benefits if things are so bad there is no option except to sit down, shut up, and do as the captain says?
I would hazard a guess that the beneficiary of that approach is not the advocate for individual liberty.
So, again, qui bono?
Sorry about double posting, but I was told the first time “missed the mark”.
“….. massive reduction of Earth’s population would show moral leadership and go first”
Scott-
I believe this is actually happening. There was an article I read a while back that said that the USA is getting more conservative (gasp!) for the very reason that the self hating liberals (as opposed to Classical Liberals) are breeding themselves out of existence by the fact they;
a.) Don’t have children.
b.) Have only 1 child
c.) Have no more than 2 children
The article went on the explain that those with 3 or more children were more optimistic on a multitude of issues. So maybe your wish (and mine) is coming true before our eyes.
A science fiction book Furedi might have mentioned is Stephen Baxter’s ‘Evolution’. The first half of the book is excellent, showing the evolution of our species from rat-like things up to the development of civilization in a series of short stories. Then, in the near future, civilization collapses due to a mixture of war and ecological catastrophe, the earth swallows us without a trace, and our descendants (who for some reason mutate to lose language) evolve back into animals.
It’s a powerful book, but I couldn’t help feeling the Baxter was forcing his point. For instance, Mars gets eaten by self-replicating machines, the descendants of an experimental von Neumann probe sent early in the next century. I couldn’t help but thinking, hey, wait, if we can build a von Neumann probe, shouldn’t civilization be able to survive with an arbitrarily small number of people? But then again, this is Stephen Baxter … always interesting, but with a decidedly dim view of humanity.
Just exactly what has happened to Frank Furedi??? Is he really the same guy who founded the Revolutionary Communist party of Great Britain? the more I read his stuff, the more I like him. The world has gone upside down 😉
Malthus was wrong because he didn’t take account of technology. For those who laugh and jeer at him though I suggest a good look at the broad swathe of land between roughly Maiduguri in Northern Nigeria and Khartoum, embracing Chad, Darfur and a little off track Niger. Why do you think there is open warfare between the agriculturalists and the herders. Why is there continuing slavery in Niger and in neigbouring west African countries? Don’t you all recognise that these people have expanded in population to the extent that they have no hope whatsoever of maintaining even the most desperately low level of life without huge inputs from outsiders. The populations have expanded five fold or more in the last few decades and here you can see the real ghastly result.
It CAN happen.
Apart from wondering what a sociologist can contribute to the debate on climate change, I also wonder which Revolutionary Communist Party Mr Furedi may have founded. There do seem to have been rather a lot of them – in fact these revolutionaries seem to have had rather more success in creating parties than revolutions…
Chaps, I don’t know much about Furedi; the old Living Marxism crowd that morphed into Spiked etc is a rum collection of folk; some, like Claire Fox, are still Marxists, as far as I can tell. I am not sure if I entirely trust them, but hey, I’ll take my good sense where I can find it.