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V.J. Chalupa On Post-Modern Politics
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CHAPTER 23 THE IDEOLOGY OF WESTERN ELITES New Civic Religion Western
elites, or rather: elitists, differ greatly from their anti-democratic
predecessors. While the latter misused values of natural human morality for
their purposes, present elites oppose and disintegrate them. They value
self-fulfillment over self-sacrifice, self-expression over self-discipline,
painless liquidation of sufferers over charity and care, the abnormal over the
normal, parts over the whole, the individual over society, rights over duties. Ideological Individualism Rights without Obligations Classical
totalitarianism professed to achieve the well-being of individuals through the
betterment of society, the elitist ideology equates the well-being of
individuals with the betterment of society. Groups, biological entities,
organizations, institutions -- all are reduced to individuals; individuals are
reduced to bodies, and bodies to bodily functions. The meaning of
"well-being" is redefined accordingly. Freedom is conceived as the
ability to fulfill one's wants, not as the ability to implement one's will and
its goals. For the first time in history of human culture, self-limitation and
fulfillment of duties was declared to be undesirable, and egocentrism,
self-fulfillment and moral autonomy of the individual proclaimed to be the
virtue which supersedes heteronomous obligations and duties. To be fully oneself
is the absolute norm, all other norms are relative; morality becomes an
autonomous norm - everyone creates the contents of his own moral system. This
philosophical individualism is absolute, and combined with scientific as
well as moral relativism it forms the basis of the elitists' ideology. Everyone
has his own truth: what is true for one is not true for others. Absolute truth
is unknowable or does not exist. Absolute moral norms do not exist; everyone has
his own morality, what is good for one is not necessarily good for others.
Therefore the elites formulate morality to suit their wants; because, for
individualism, the individual is the only reality, they live in the present and
the future, and this defines the character of their culture, entertainment and
lifestyle: instant gratification and conspicuous consumption. This
attitude has found its philosophical underpinning in two concepts: that of the
historical "point zero" and the "irrelevance of facts."
According to the former, history is insignificant; a new (postmodern) era has
begun which is so different from the previous ones that the past lost all
relevance and history is starting again from "point zero." The latter
asserts that people can make their decisions only on what they know; therefore
facts and "truth" are unimportant, or at least less important than
people's opinions; because people act on the basis of their opinions, they
transform their opinions into reality which obliterates the actual
circumstances.. Therefore manipulation of concepts and imaging is the key to
power. Individualism
as an ideology creates its own normative system based on the self; it is composed of self-confidence; self-determination,
self-fulfillment, self-realization. The contents of these wants become parts
(derived objectives) of the purpose of happiness of individuals and the general
means towards their attainment are economic wealth and political as well as
extra-political power. The pursuit of these values (normed and/or willed
contents) introduces to society the dynamism of differentiation and selection in
the form of competition, but lacks the element of integration. From the
standpoint of spiritual development, they have a positive influence (utility) as
long as spiritual contents derived from traditional, customary, religious and
moral norms acting in the opposite direction, i.e., integrationally (humility,
self-criticism, self-discipline, obedience, self-denial, unselfishness) prevail
in the composition of individuals' objectives of happiness to such an extent
that they represent the consensus, the civic religion of the society. A
one-sided prevalence of integration elements which dampens differentiation and
selection, undermines the vitality of society. A preponderance of centrifugal
factors, i.e., differentiation and competition, causes disintegration of society
and has a damaging, counterproductive effect on society's spiritual development
and vitality. The
ideology of individualism (which includes economic individualism) begins with
treating integrative values as controversial, then denies them and ultimately
suppresses them. Among its main targets are feelings of inferiority,
self-criticism, self-doubt, guilt -- these are never justified, these are
"unhealthy." So is born a culture
of shamelessness (24): there is
nothing an individual should be ashamed of, as long as it expresses his
"I," his "choice." The process of choice is more important,
is superior to the outcome of the choice. Shame is the sign of inner
uncertainty, immaturity, a psychological defect. Scruples are to be done away
with; there is nothing beyond the pale, nothing too intimate, private, delicate,
nothing can be condemned as a deviation or perversity because the principle
"if it feels so good, it cannot be wrong" applies.
The media dismantle peoples' inclination to distinguish between right and
wrong by exposing the public systematically to presentation of activities,
especially in the areas of violence and sex, which offend custom, tradition,
morals or religion. Feelings of guilt, of incompetence, doubts about one's own
value or dignity are presented as the roots of antisocial behavior or
criminality. Self-confidence is the medicine for society's ills; once women
overcome their feelings of inferiority vis-a-vis men, negroes vis-a-vis whites,
homosexuals vis-a-vis persons of normal sex (called "homophobes") ,
alcoholics vis-a-vis tee-totalers, drop-outs vis-a-vis valedictorians, drug
users vis-a-vis those who abstain from drugs, society will be sane and healthy.
The responsibility for its problems lies with those who are
"judgmental" with regard to individuals of an "alternative
life-style" and who attribute failure or criminality to individuals rather
than society, upbringing and circumstances. As
a result of these pressures, the sphere of individual freedom, permissiveness
and licentiousness constantly grows; the individual is hardly ever ashamed for
his behavior; on the contrary, he forces others to "accept him as he
is". The individual arrogates to himself the right to impose his
individuality on and against all others. Not only do the rights of the majority
to make decisions become controversial, the right of the community to live
according to its own values is contested and considered as oppression. Doctrinaire Relativism As
a consequence, objective norms of behavior are resisted; endeavors to defend,
formulate or enforce such norms are, in the vocabulary of individualism,
attempts to impose one's own opinions on others. Each individual has the right
to develop his qualities regardless of their nature because their evaluation and
judging by society is interference with the individual's right to
self-expression. The individual's will for self-realization ultimately results
in the denial of an objective reality and of the possibility to know it. When
everybody has his own truth and one's truth is not true for others,
then such denial of objective standards makes a dialog meaningless and discussion a nonsensical exercise in
futility: principled relativism renders it impossible to choose between various
opinions: all assertions are equally valid, or invalid, and positive values are
attributed to certain processes without regard to their outcome (25). The
relativization of values is reflected in manipulated
language: some expressions are not acceptable, new terminology is
introduced. "Political correctness" language has eliminated
expressions such as "deviant", "perverse",
"abnormal", they are replaced by words such as "different,"
""alternate", "other." Even the term
""normal" is too
judgmental when used as a basis for evaluation. This pertains also to physically
obvious and measurable properties: for instance persons with disabilities are
"differently abled", nations with the lowest standard of living must
not be described as undeveloped or underdeveloped, but "developing,"
and so forth. The tendency to do away with grading in schools (or its various
manipulations (11)
is aimed in the same direction, because one's own lower grades or someone else's
higher grades would induce feelings of inferiority in less successful students,
although they are not responsible for such failures: responsible are social
circumstances (poverty, discrimination) or their subconscious (parents). In
such a culture, rational discourse must be replaced by psychological
manipulation and the disappearance of informal controls by an intrusion of bureaucratic
controls into previously autonomous areas, the requirement of absolute tolerance, insistence on multiculturalism, protection of deviant
life-styles. Tolerance, however, does not extend to persons and movements which
reject this scope of tolerance and the moral relativism; against them,
consistent action is taken: their opinions are judged and condemned as
reactionary, doctrinaire, imposition of their own opinions on the society, and
they are exposed to social and professional discrimination (in access to media,
promotion, criticism). In the name of human rights, they become, when needed and
when these informal measures do not suffice, a target of the executive power of
the state (protection and preference of various minorities and life-styles
against the majority (see Appendix No. 7). The
success of elitism is not explicable solely by the techniques of decentralized
totalitarianism; it depends largely on the contents of the inflammatory idea
presented to the society. Because its philosophy demands that each person be
free and able to fulfill his wants, it requires that the manipulators discover
what people want, and then convince them they can attain it, and in the process
to alienate them to the established civic religion while redefining the concepts
of "good" ( = what I want) and "bad" ( = what is in my way)
in the sense of economic materialism -- pursuit of a career and immediate
satisfaction. The
strongest instincts of all higher organisms are self-preservation, need of food,
and sex, in this order. Communism derived its strength from the first two
instincts -- from threats to one's existence (war) and from physical misery
(unemployment). In developed societies where the state guarantees protection of
life and limb and welfare protects from hunger (in the sense of permanent or
prolonged shortage of food), the satisfaction of the sexual instinct acquires a
special importance in daily life and permeates entertainment and culture and the
demand for limitless sexual permissiveness ("sexual freedom") can be
made the instrument of destroying established moral, traditional or religious
restrictions (conveniently termed "taboos" to intimate their
unscientific nature). The Social Contract For
politics, the most relevant expression of individualism has become the theory of
the social contract, implicitly or explicitly accepted by social sciences in the
West. According to this theory, the individual in his original, natural state
was entirely free; complete freedom resulted in the struggle of all against all
which was damaging to everybody, and therefore individuals concluded, in their
own individual interest, a treaty according to which they gave up a part of
their freedom in favor of an institution which would enforce such a limitation
-- this institution is the state. The existence and scope of a state's
legitimate power is thus derived from the agreement between individuals, certain
areas are entirely excluded from the state's (the government's)
interference -- the inalienable human rights and civil liberties -- and
in other areas the state may interfere only with its citizens' consent.
The limitation of a citizen's freedom and the limit of the legitimacy of
state's interference is expressed by the principle that one individual's freedom
to pursue his happiness must not impinge on the same freedom of other
individuals. Therefore, if the conditions of such a contract are violated by the
state by exceeding its competence, it loses its legitimacy and its members have
the right to revolt. Evaluation Because
democracy has been found (cf. Chapter 20) to be the political system most
closely corresponding to the evolutionary principles of being, the relationship
to democracy is used as the measuring standard of elitism's qualities. Polarization The
economic a social polarization inherent in elitism is in itself an impediment to
democracy. Still more damaging is the intellectual and ideological polarization
which elitism engenders by eroding the middle class. The middle class harbors
and protects values which the elites strive to overcome: family, nation,
patriotism, religion, local self-government, all opposites of those dear to the
elites: cosmopolitism, feminism, sexual permissiveness, unlimited abortion
rights. The opinions of "the people" are basically simple: Children
benefit if their parents live together, private behavior and private morality
have consequences for society and in public affairs, work should be rewarded and
workers are entitled to the results of their efforts, public treasury should
help those, and only those, who need it and are unable to help themselves,
religion is beneficial for society, violations of the law, especially crimes of
violence should be punished promptly and strictly. At the same time, the middle
class considers some creations of the cultural elites to be ridiculous,
senseless or even disgusting . The
elites fail to and don't care to understand the resistance of the middle class
to the introduction of the sundry "alternative life-styles" and the
social engineering implemented in education, healthcare, environmental
protection; they find it incomprehensible how anyone could reject their
carefully thought out models and plans for the betterment of society; opposing
opinions are due to backwardness ("these people do not understand what all
this is about"). They react with contempt, hatred, intolerance and fear to
"populism," "right-wing extremists,"
"reactionaries" and "fundamentalism." The greatest enmity is
reserved for religion and especially Christianity. While a certain measure of
tolerance is granted to certain protestant denominations, islam, judaism,
hinduism, nature worship (goddesses) and also satanism and witchcraft,
discrimination against biblical Christianity and against the Catholic Church is
implacable and extends from generalities all the way to individuals (see
Appendix 8). The
value systems of these two groups, the elites and the middle class, are
incompatible, and as the elites ("The Movement"- see Chapter 7)
possess key positions and self-assurance, their temptation is great to use
methods of managerism and modified totalitarianism. On the other side, the
middle class feels that its influence on the direction of the government's
policies is small or nil, loses trust in democracy and political debates which
center around esoteric political theories of the elites and have very little to
do with ordinary peoples' daily worries and interests. Thus the general opinion
that politics is dirty business and that all politicians are corrupt, and this
disinterest in politics makes the dominance of the elites easier and undermines
the hopes for democratically effected changes. Unequal
opportunities. An
important element of democracy is the possibility, or at least the conviction
that it guarantees social mobility, i.e., that
all citizens have in principle the same opportunity to attain excellence and
prominence without any institutional hindrances. In the presence of the elites,
this assumption is invalid: their children (provided they have any) have such
superior education that their advantages are practically insurmountable. In
their suburbs, they attend prestigious colleges which offer special classes or programs for outstanding
performers. These schools are equipped with laboratories and interactive
computers, students have at their disposal extensive libraries with the latest
publications in high-tech, classes are relatively small so that teachers and
professors can devote attention to individual students; the wealth of their
parents enables them to visit museums, concerts, theaters, foreign travel; at
home they have microscopes, telescopes, miniature laboratories, and the newest
personal computer hardware and software, connected to international networks.
From there, their road takes them directly to elite universities; after
graduation they are certain to find employment in jobs whose starting
compensation exceeds the average annual income of the population. Technical
knowledge is the most profitable "means of production" in a highly
industrialized society, and the children of the elites have in this field
unbeatable advantage over the rest, provided they show equal interest and
intelligence. Because they mostly inherit from their elders a contemptuous
attitude towards less capable individuals, the privileges in knowledge and
education reinforce the polarization of the society. They belong to The Movement
whose consolidation is at present the only serious threat to democracy. No
social contract The
ideology of the social contract and the structure of society derived from it won
over states grounded on different principles because it provided for a free play
of differentiation and competition. It won as long as its centrifugal elements
were offset by integration based on extra-legal origins (custom, tradition,
religion) and awareness of a common enemy. When individualism weakened and/or
destroyed these elements, the theory of social contract also contributed to the
problems of Western civilization for three reasons: it is logically erroneous,
normatively incorrect and factually untrue. Societies do exist. The
logical error of this contractual
conception of society derives from a deficient understanding of the relationship
of a totality (a whole) and its parts. The social contract's construction
reduces society (community, collective) to its parts (individuals) and then
assumes that actions of egocentric individuals will result in a collective
harmony while each individual has the right to maximum self-determination,
self-realization and self-fulfillment insofar as he does not inhibit others in
pursuing their own individual purposes to a maximum extent. Translated into
exact terminology it assumes that the pursuit of a maximum of satisfaction ("happiness") by various
individuals in a situation of limited
means will not result in conflicts of interests. The elimination of certain
types of conflict (use of physical violence) means solely that the conflicts
will assume different forms (use of checkbook rather than guns). Only if the
goals of happiness of all individuals include a significant portion of a common
concept of a good or better community, will there be harmony; however, the
philosophy of individualism does not provide the basis for such consensus -- it
must come from other sources to offset individualism's centrifugal tendencies. Norms are the essence of law The
normative misconception of the Social contract construct is its foundation on
rights of individuals understood as civil liberties which normatively represent
a void, an absence of duties. This is contrary to the nature of the legal order
which is a system of norms, i.e., duties. As a part of a legal system, any right
requires the existence of a subject's or subjects' corresponding duty to perform
or abstain from performing certain action or actions. When the identity of the
subjects of such duty is clear, the law is clear; where the subject of duty is
not identified or identified only in general terms (such as
"everybody") the clarity of the law is lost and norm-giving passes
from the norm-giver to the judiciary or the executive. If the law provides for a
"right to work," the question immediately arises: who is the subject
whose duty it is to provide work for the holder of the right to work? If the
entitled subject has no work, whom can he sue for providing the work? Another
example is the "right to life." Its extent itself is unclear: does it
include the right to be born, to be provided with medical care (to preserve
life), to be provided with nutrition and nursing in the event of disability, and
if so, who is the subject of duty? A
legal system based on rights suffers from an additional
difficulty. Law defines duties unambiguously; but rights overlap and
conflict. Does the right of free exercise of religion give prisoners the right
to be provided with special types of meals? or have a special haircut or facial
hair? Does the right to property entitle the owner of a building to refuse
renting facilities for a bar or tavern? (It does.) Is he also entitled to refuse
renting it for an abortion clinic? (No.) Does the right of assembly protect
associating on the basis of certain properties with the exclusion of persons not
having such properties? In case of nationality, yes; in case of race or gender,
no. Does the freedom of expression protect expressions of anti-semitism? No.
Expressions of anti-catholic bias? Yes. Conflicts between rights and their
enforcement by individuals can lead to bizarre situations when rights of one
person can annul the rights of all other members of a whole to which such
individual belongs (See Appendix 7.) Man as Zoon Politicon The
factual error of the social contract theory is evident from the nature of man.
The theory assumes that society and the state derive from an agreement to form a
community by a consent of previously isolated individuals concluded in
their subjective interest. In history and prehistory, there is no indication
that human communities arose from such an agreement. On the contrary,
anthropology as well as similarities with the life of social animals indicate
otherwise. If the natural state of man is to be the basis for political
theories, they must start with the notion that men in their natural state did
not live as isolated individuals, but in communities as social beings. Society
therefore did not arise by a transition of naturally isolated individuals from
their isolation to a community, a transition based on their rational renouncing
of some freedom, men always lived in communities and under conditions limiting
their individual behavior which such a type of life involves. The
kind of limitations which existed can be deduced from the behavior of members of
primitive human societies as well as the behavior of communities of animals
which appear to be physically and mentally closest to homo sapiens. Observation
unequivocally shows that their communities are structured so that various
members perform various activities (functions) and that their behavior tends
mainly to preserve the life and growth of the communities. Repetitive
performance of a function by a member of the community creates the supposition
and expectation that the same individual will continue to perform it; it becomes
his responsibility and a "duty." It is not true that society was put
together by individuals, on the contrary, society arose from natural communities
and rights and liberties of individuals developed by their gradual shedding of
restraints imposed on them by their social nature. Human ability to refuse the
performance of functions falling to an individual by virtue of his membership in
his community distinguishes human communities from animal ones (Appendix 9). A
refusal to perform the expected and natural function usually entails a sanction,
mostly expulsion from the community (aqua et igni interdictio in old tribal Roman law) . This is the
beginning of a system of sanctioned norms backed by the power of the community
-- rudiments of a legal system. Summary In
nature the evolutionary elements of differentiation and selection are outweighed
by integration; individualism disturbs this natural relationship, therefore it
is (by constant enlargement of the sphere of rights and liberties and
relativization of all values) ultimately disruptive and anti-evolutionary.
Individualism without a counterbalance of duties is unrealizable in the sense
that it leads towards the paralysis of society and its disintegration.. A
natural integrating element between individuals is their interest in the
survival of their biological group, in their posterity, and as long as it is a
constituent part of their purpose of happiness, society survives; however, such
an interest is, in the light of the philosophy of individualism, illogical and
people are conditioned by their elitist cultural environment not to attribute to
it too great a value. Because
human life outside of the framework of society is impossible and its survival is
in the interest of the presently living generations, integration of an
individualist society is provided by a bureaucracy whose growth is in the end
counterproductive. To function and exist, the complexity of modern civilization
demands from its members interdependence and mutual self-limitation; in
a highly evolved society the idea of an individual as a self-willed and
self-determining unit is anachronistic. Individualism
as the highest norm of behavior is unrealizable also on the level of
individuals. Man is a living being as well as a social being. The properties of
self-sacrifice, self-discipline, self-denial are deeply inborn and their roots
can be traced to natural laws which regulate the life of each living cell, i.e.,
also each living cell of every human being. For his complete development, man
needs also to develop these fundamental properties which constitute him as a
living organism of the "homo sapiens" kind and only in a harmonic
development of the potential for unselfish and self-centered properties does a
human being acquire personality. The suppression of the self-denying
potentialities in favor of the development of
self-centered potentialities in the interest of personal happiness can, under
the influence of a cultural environment, temporarily stifle and overwhelm the
dissatisfaction stemming from the disregard of the altruistic potentialities,
but must fail, because man's need of happiness has no limits (is maximum) while
the means of achieving it, his own (i.e., physical and spiritual) as well as the
acquired ones (power and wealth) are limited. Happiness as an end is, therefore,
always an objectively inachievable goal. In
the development of Western civilization, cultural, economic and political
disintegrative factors flowing from elitism and its philosophy of individualism,
economic materialism and biomaterialism, are increasingly prevailing over
integration. This is, basically, the root cause of its difficulties, problems,
crises (Appendix 6) and decline. The
situation is a facet of the desintegration of the Western civilization. Many
critics and enemies are assiduously working to overthrow it: Moslems who view it
as the instrument of Satan, feminists who consider it an oppressive patriarchal
structure, blacks who criticize it as a system of domination by the "white
devils," environmentalists who charge it with destroying the nature and the
planet. They
all have a common adversary: Christianity. And rightly so, because true
Christianity is a defender of natural morality, a common sense value system and
submission to a will and reason on which existence itself is contingent. These
are the principles on which Western civilization was founded. They are all
opposed by the elites' ideology, but Western civilization, a development of the
Christian civilization, can not survive the steady undermining of its
foundations. Economic Materialism The
fall of Communism represents certainly a victory of the free enterprise system.
Its heart is a free market where demand and supply meet; the market maintains
their balance through movement of prices, allocates resources in the most
effective way, competition lowers prices, increases quality and stimulates
unceasing technological progress. Where are the customers? This
is theory. But the real picture of global economy is different. On one side
there is an enormous unsatisfied demand for food and industrial products, on the
other side is an enormous capacity to produce food and manufactured goods, and
yet, these two do not meet. The reason: the owners of the means of production
(this term is to be understood here in its widest sense as all productive
assets, all means organized for the purpose of producing goods or services
including commerce, finance, communications etc.) in the industrialized nations
have no use for items which the masses of prospective buyers in underdeveloped
countries can offer in exchange. The
free economic system generates an improvement of efficiency; improvement of
efficiency means to produce the same amount of better goods with savings on
materials and mainly labor. Work is taken over by machinery, machinery is
directed by computers, computers are managed by experts, other labor becomes
gradually superfluous: blue collar workers, white collar workers, supervisors
and managers. The savings on labor are in reality mass lay-offs of people. Work
that consisted of activities which were repetitive and demanded nevertheless a
certain level of intelligence, experience and responsibility, such as skilled
labor or office workers, are disappearing, and with them decreases the middle
class whose main component they are. Hopes
that the information revolution would engender a massive demand for educated
experts have failed to realize; the main increase in the demand for labor takes
place in personal services. The flood of information made available in
technically advanced nations, profits mainly, if not exclusively, those who are
familiar with and interested in the global economy and intellectual endeavors --
the manipulators of symbols;
for the others, technological progress brings principally a more perfect and
accessible form of entertainment or new kinds of games and toys. The gap between
the knowledge class and the rest of the population is widening rather than
closing. The tendency is towards a hourglass society in which only a small
fraction will enjoy full benefits of education, money and power. Islands of Affluence The
gulf of economic imbalance separates developed and underdeveloped nations, but
it exists also within the industrialized nations. It is kept under control by
social legislation such as unemployment compensation, social security and
similar programs. Lately, there are attempts to combine social care with
measures of reverse solidarism (Chapter 9) aimed at elimination of unproductive
members of society (euthanasia, contraceptives, abortion, assisted suicide).
Social programs have so far been able to keep the lid on violence because
industrialized nations are wealthy enough to buy themselves social peace. It is
doubtful they will be able to do so indefinitely. Already some symptoms of
unrest are apparent even in the United States which anticipates the development
in the remaining industrialized world: rise of a welfare dependent population,
growing national debt, out of control budgets deficits, breakdown of law and
order in entire neighborhoods, creation
of isolated secure enclaves for the elites, emergence of self-defense militias
by citizens expecting a collapse of civilization. The islands of affluence are
reaching higher and higher quality of life while becoming smaller and smaller
and more and more isolated. Global Levelling of Wages The
nature of the free enterprise system is to expand and to remove all obstacles
hampering its growth. It keeps integrating the world into one global economy.
The market has the same levelling effect globally as it has had within
individual national economies: free movement of capital and goods, and also of
compensation for labor. This assumes two forms: either people from low wage
areas move (legally or illegally) to higher wage areas, thus pushing down the
wages there; or else the means of production move from higher wage level areas
to areas with lower wages, with the same final outcome. This levelling effect is
disadvantageous to labor in developed countries and has social and political
repercussions. The Superfluous People The
population of the countries left behind is worse off. Fax machines, cellular
telephones and information networks are for their lives totally irrelevant; TV
pictures of mass migration, famines and refugee camps are a telling evidence of
it. In addition to labor, underdeveloped countries offer raw materials, tourism,
and bodies of their citizens (prostitution and sale of children for sex as well
as commerce in body parts, especially of aborted fetuses). The compensation for
these available "items of commerce" can satisfy only a small fraction of the pent-up demand; most of
it remains unsatisfied because owners of the means of production cannot exchange
their goods for items for which they have no use. They are limited to dealing
with those who can offer useful goods in exchange, i.e., other industrialized
countries and the elites of developing nations, and with them they form a
balanced economic system. Within it, the advantages of free enterprise are
realized: a rising standard of living up to the level of luxury, technological
advances, absorbing a growing share in the world's natural resources. Excluded
from this circle of affluence are millions of people, indeed the majority of the
world's population which -- seen from the standpoint of the owners of the means
of production -- is really superfluous insofar as it has nothing
"useful" to offer. Elitism
leads everywhere to a polarization of the society -- the "hourglass
shape," and this process impacts heavily the middle class of developing
countries because it is still in its beginnings and therefore weak.
Only the overclass of individuals working with symbols and/or cooperating with
the elites of developed countries gains in power and wealth; the rest faces a
bleak future or no future whatsoever. If
people cannot secure their livelihood and other desirable goods in exchange for
their labor, they might endeavor to obtain them by force. The more numerous such
people are, the greater the pressure leading to violence: first domestically
(uprisings, collapse of law and order, revolutions, civil war), then to
organized violence against other countries (war, terrorism or extortion).
Industrialized nations attempt to preclude such development in two ways: by a
policy of depopulation through open or hidden coercion, and by a world order on
their own terms which would crush in the bud attempts at violent change. But
the situation is ominous. Experts predict shortly a multiplication of
mega-cities with populations exceeding eleven million people whose living
conditions will be terrible beyond imagination: security, housing, education,
water, sewers, all social services unmanageable and unavailable. These
perspectives are known, the danger imminent, but few preparations are made to
meet them. The only remedy the developed countries are offering and introducing
is depopulation. Evaluation Because
the root of the problem is not numbers of people, but political and economic
changes: the degeneration of democracies into elitist societies, extra-political
concentration of gigantic multinational corporations, parallel "cultural
colonialism" and failure of international institutions to deal effectively
with regional and global problems, the attempt at depopulation will either be
overtaken by events and fail, or result in a humanity static, stagnant and
ultimately declining. Biomaterialism The
problem of present times is the unequal distribution of material goods between
the industrialized and the undeveloped nations, an inequality which has the
potential of a violent conflict or a series of violent conflicts. Western elites
formulate this problem as a collision of limited natural resources and unlimited
human demand, and interpret human demand as a function of the number of people.
Their goal: a balance between
natural resources and a limited number of physically and mentally perfect people
free of want and surrounded with comfort; their
means: stopping or reversing population growth, eliminating substandard
individuals, eugenic measures aimed at improving the genetic pool of humanity,
all this in accordance with the philosophy of biological materialism which is
dominant among the elites. It is a combination of neomalthusianism, progress in
genetics and techniques of changing genes, eugenics and sexual permissiveness
with ecology. Biological materialism proceeds from the assumption that man is an
animal whose properties differ in degree, not in essence from other kinds of
animals. Man is identical with his bodily processes, these spatio-temporal
processes are viewed as consequences of causes which are his genes and his
environment. What follows is that it is
possible to improve the human race by the application of the same methods that
were already successfully used in breeding (other) animals.
The regulation of human numbers, quality and environment are the center piece of this ideology. Bioethics Biomaterialism has its own logic whose conclusions are correctly
derived from the above-described premises. Their implementation is generally
resisted when subjected to evaluation according to the norms of the prevailing
ethic s, whether traditional or Christian. It was correctly anticipated (see
Appendix 2) that the utilization of the means proposed by biomaterialism
necessitates the creation of a new ethical system, which would make them
defensible. This task was undertaken by a new branch of philosophy –
bioethicsBioethics claims to be a new science concentrated in “elite academic
centers.” Its object is deciding on morality in medical research and practice.
The first congress of bioethicists whose participants virtually declared themselves to be the elite of this
new field, agreed upon the following guidelines from which to derive
justification (morality) of activities in their field: (1) The action advances
research. (2) There is no hope for a cure. (3) The patient suffers pain. (4) The
cure is too expensive. From these guidelines, the following actions were
pronounced as moral by a majority: experimentation on human embryos; use human
tissues and organs, especially of victims of induced abortion, for manufacture
of medicines and/or cosmetics; killing an unconscious patient at the request of
his family or other authority; termination of life of a patient whose care would
absorb a disproportionate share of public monies; killing subnormal newborn
babies; causing the death of a comatose patient by dehydration and denial of
food; prescribing if and how many
children may be born; denial of welfare to unwed mothers unless they submit to
“voluntary” sterilization; refusal of assistance to communities with less
than a required utilization of contraceptives; cloning human beings; create
supplies of embryos and destroy them if unused; implant human embryos into
bodies of animals; abort a fetus from a body of a women carrying it for money,
at the request of the biological parents. The general consensus was that there
was no general rule except that there was to be no general rule, but decisions
should be made on a case by case basis. In much of bioethics literature,
“life-or-death giving care” is equivalent Because ethics is a normative system par excellence, the entire
project of bioethics became suspect and bioethicists became described as experts
in inventing moral justification for activities which prevailing morality
rejected as immoral and illegal. It is therefore not surprising that reluctant
to submit their opinions to the public and to democratic discussion by using the
customary justification that an “ordinary” citizen lacks the necessary
knowledge to make rational decisions in their field. Attempts of public
authorities to regulate some of the most controversial activities in the
question of “death-giving care” met an indignant resistance as an
infringement of privacy or interference with the practice of medicine. Smaller
groups of bioethicists endeavor to introduce Christian, mainly Catholic moral
norms into this field, but without significant results; on the contrary, the
legalization of “medicide” by some courts and by states are proof that in
this area, too, the elitist have gained ground. Regulation
of Numbers In
the present situation, biomaterialism equates numerical regulation of population
with its reduction or at least zero growth. It is a method based on the axiom
that humanity grows geometrically while production of food only arithmetically
(malthusianism). The elites especially in the USA (building on the findings of
Rockefeller's commission on the family established by president Nixon who
subsequently rejected its findings) added the following axiom: not only does the
number of people grow, their standard of living also grows and the expectation
is that it will continue to grow indefinitely (neomalthusianism). The problem
therefore is no longer limited to shortage of food, it includes the exhaustion
of irreplaceable natural resources and the contamination of the environment by
human actions, mainly industry through which men try to achieve their growing
expectations. The
regulation of consumption is left by the elites to the free economy (market).
Because free economy constantly fabricates new sources of dissatisfaction and
new needs in order to increase profits, this policy of laissez
passer cannot but create a fast increase of consumption, i.e., utilization
of resources. Therefore the elites focus their attention on the second part of
the equation of the axiom of economic materialism: not the size of consumption,
but the number of consumers which, ultimately, means the number of living human
beings. As long as there are societies in which the average consumption equals
five, six or more times the consumption per person in other societies, this
axiom is wrong, and so are solutions derived from it. Depopulation is then
proclaimed as the only means by which the assumed imbalance between human
consumption and natural resources is to be redressed. Sex
yes, progeny no Nature
has connected reproduction of the species with the third strongest instinct of
living beings, the sex instinct; sexual organs are directly connected with or
rather a part of the reproduction organs. In order
to stop and reverse the natural growth of humanity unleashed by the progress of
medical science and to undo this triumph, it was indispensable to sever the
connection between sex and reproduction . Providing
for the separation of sex from generation required the discovery and
introduction of a multitude of mechanical, chemical and surgical contraceptive
measures and the replacement of natural and religious norms. The
free market system furnished the first. The most primitive and traditional ways
to prevent the birth of another human being have been infanticide and abortion.
Surgical procedures of infanticide of handicapped babies and of abortion of
unwanted children have been perfected so as to be fast, safe and frequent, and
their commercialization gave birth to a most profitable medical practice
bringing vast profits to their practitioners while making abortion also
financially accessible, government subsidized and/or imposed. Abortion was
promptly joined by sterilization (voluntary, under duress or forced). Mechanical
means included an explosion in the production, availability and popularization
of condoms and sundry foams, implants and inserts (“femdoms") to prevent
the meeting of the sperm and the egg or destroy its consequences. The
pharmacological industry subsidized successful research in products to produce
infertility in women by pills and implants or to invent abortifacients of
conceived embryos. A
new branch of science named sexology undertook the other precondition of
depopulation, namely the destruction of norms (traditional, religious and legal
designated as "taboos" by the scientists) prohibiting or penalizing
artificial means of preventing or destroying the unity of the sexual act with
reproduction. The severance of sex from generation got a strong push from the
feminist movement whose creators and representatives took the position that
women have the same right to enjoy the pleasures of sex as men without having to
fear its consequences; this movement became the strongest defender of elective
abortion. Next
to mass media, the most effective disseminator of this new ideology is the
school system. Education in sexology is for biomaterialism as indispensable as
marx-leninism was for the communist ideology. It begins already in grammar
school (sometimes even in kindergarten) and continues without interruption for
ten to thirteen years -- more hours are devoted to it than to reading, writing
or any other subject. The approach is clinical and "non-judgmental."
This means a graphic description of all sexual activities stressing their
equivalency and focusing on two objectives: dismantling any inhibitions and
sense of modesty which the sexologues classify as unhealthy and unnatural
barriers to full sexual fulfillment; the other goal is to learn all about the
methods of preventing or terminating pregnancy -- pregnancy is presented as the
only absolute wrong in sexual intercourse, even worse than venereal diseases
(renamed as "social diseases" whose sufferers deserve compassion and
understanding rather than criticism of their behavior). A schoolbook which
recommended sexual abstinence and marriage as the safest methods of preventing
infection by venereal diseases had to be withdrawn from California schools; the
judiciary decided it was propagating religion and by violating the separation of
church and state endangering the free exercise of religion. In
general, this project of inculcating the new civic religion to society has been
enormously successful , even if its implementation does not proceed without
resistance. The
severance of sex from procreation has far reaching consequences. Primarily, it
fundamentally changed the importance of sex and the relationship between man and
woman. Traditionally, the acceptance of a man by a woman meant that she is
willing (or at least willing to risk) to offer her body to generate within it
his (more exactly their joint) child, that she will feed this child through her
own blood and that she will, in spite of discomfort and pain, allow it to grow
and bring it in the world.This unique and stunning gift bound the man to provide
for her and their child, care for them and protect them and never abandon her --
to become "one flesh." This moral obligation was protected by custom
and by law in
the institution of marriage. Therefore, man and woman approached marriage with
serious deliberation and responsibility and its desired foundation was love and
not lust. Love was one center around which gravitated a large portion of human
culture: songs, dances, poems, dramas, novels. By
substituting barren fornication for love, woman's gift to man lost its
uniqueness: it became the equivalent of the opening which homosexuals offer to
each other. Actually, it became the equivalent of any moist opening in the human
body, and sexual education does not cease to underscore this equivalency: it
repeats that there is no clinically substantial difference between copulation,
masturbation, anal sex, oral sex and other forms of exciting the genitals; all
these forms are a matter of taste, inclination and preference. Love does not
have to precede intimacy; casual encounter suffices. Communications media of all
types depict extramarital sex as the norm. After months of sexual intimacy, the
hero (or heroine) declares to his/her "partner": I think I am
beginning to be in love with you. School
books on sexology do not speak anymore of men and women, not to mention husband
and wife, only about "partners" because anything else would not be
clinically objective and could have a judgmental undertone. In
view of the above, it is only logical that marriage loses the justification for
its privileged legal position and that live-in partners are obtaining the same
status, with special legal protection extended to homosexuals whose life-style
is still the object of disapproval of a vast majority. In the United States, a
Colorado referendum prohibiting the state from giving homosexuals preferential
status was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1997. Open disapproval of
cohabitation without marriage and criticism of divorce and of the institution of
one-parent families originally common in America's civil religion, has been
replaced with indifference and has become considered as bad manners.
The
new attitude towards fertility left its mark on the parents-children
relationship. From its predominant position having children has been demoted to
the same level of importance with other components of happiness; spouses, resp.
"partners" evaluate offspring against the career, comfort, pets and
entertainment rather than considering all of them as less important than the
existence, care and well-being of children. The separation of sex from
reproduction resulted also in a widespread "production" of children in
other ways, such as artificial insemination, creation of embryos in
laboratories, freezing of embryos, their implantation in the uterus of a woman
other than their biological mother ("renting a womb"), claim of a
right to adopt children by homosexual and lesbian couples, destruction of
superfluous or deficient (also "wrong sex") embryos and of frozen
unused embryos by the thousands (Great Britain). The
reduction of love to genital stimulation has affected all relationships between
people, of different as well as same gender. Sex is assumed to be underlying
every action, dress, look and movement. Friendship and camaraderie are assumed
to include mutual sexual accommodations. Sexual motivations are attributed to
parents embracing and kissing their children or kindergarten personnel patting
or stroking their charges (and some of them are sued for molestation decades
later on the basis of alleged suppressed memories: the most blatant cases were
those of cardinal Bernardin in Chicago and archbishop Groer in Vienna); an eight
years old pupil is punished for giving a kiss to a girl of the same age. Once
unleashed, sex became all-pervasive; two observations were proven right.
Socrates is right when remarking about sex that "we scratch, because it
itches, and it itches because we scratch". An overwhelming part of the
culture, from songs to advertisement, is engaged in constantly
"scratching" the sex impulse: even in grocery stores, from covers of
magazines dozens of beautiful women with partly bared breasts and dentures stare
brazenly at shoppers. Nudity sells automobiles as well as recordings of Bach.
And the observation of Czechoslovak writer Karel €apek, the creator
of the word "robot," was also borne out: that sex requires
intensification, requires new and stronger forms of stimulation, until it ends
in perversity, use of drugs and ultimately cruelty. Western culture became
crude: obscenities invaded
the language, spoken, written, sung; pornographic passages and episodes
became a must in art and literature: novels, spy and detective stories,
science fiction, in dramas, movies, television, on computer networks. All these
changes have the same goal and effect: decrease of births and increase in sex.
The famous British commentator Malcolm Muggeridge quipped: "Birth control
means no births and no control." Sex
became the elites' battering ram shattering the existing civic religion. In the
changing of culture, elitism is much more effective than communism. Communism
projected the implementation of its promises to the future and demanded
sacrifices and self-denial for their achievement. By removing all cultural
barriers against utilizing the sexual instinct exclusively for bodily
gratification and by supplying the technical means of eliminating its natural
consequences, elitism succeeded in offering and delivering to men a wide scale
of formerly unattainable or hardly attainable pleasures with no delays,
sacrifices and expenses. Delayed consequences and ignored (although predictable
and predicted) side effects (epidemics of new venereal diseases, destruction of
the institution of marriage, juvenile criminality, overtaxing of social
services, failures of public education) are considered by the ideology of
biomaterialism as an acceptable price for the achievement of the ultimate goal:
control (actually reduction) of births and reversal of the growth of humanity.
Viewed from this angle, elitism is a success. Regulation of Quality
In
1963, W.H. McNeill, author of the thousand-page long history of the world The Rise of the West, concluded, that the next step in perfecting
the control of society beyond the level attained by communism in the USSR would
be interference with human heredity and manipulation with human genes in order
to manufacture conveniently specialized subhuman and superhuman biological
species. The resulting increase of efficiency and induced social harmony will
give the bureaucracies of the world unforeseeable opportunities to concentrate
power. Rationalization and acceleration of human development in the interest of
increased productivity and social tranquillity will bring about a social
revolution at whose end men will differ from their predecessors as much as
modern cattle differ from their wild ancestors. Mankind will be tamed and the
population of the post-human kind could become specialized in its functions and
differentiated in its properties as insect communities are at present. Under
the impact of biology and biotechniques, humanity made significant progress in
the direction of these predictions. In 1970, the famous editorial of the
prestigious California Medicine (see
Appendix 1) called for abandonment of "Christian ethics" of absolute
value of human life and its replacement by a more practical ethic of its
relative value. Society, primarily physicians, would decide what resources and
efforts should be devoted to the curing of those who are to be preserved and who
not, whom to feed, shelter, support, educate and give medical assistance, until
the control and selectivity of birth is equated by the control and selectivity
of dying. The medical profession is to assume the role of veterinarians of the
human race. The
eighties saw the first combination of human genes with animal genes, the
production of human embryos by in vitro fertilization and experimentation on
living embryos. Since
then, progress in that direction accelerated. Since 1992, it became known that
remnants of aborted babies were used in the manufacture of cosmetics and drugs,
in 1995 it was proven that they are used as food under the designation of
"uterine material," "product of abortion," "fetal
tissue" and similar euphemisms. In 1997, the first transplant of a retina
taken from a freshly aborted baby to a patient with fading eyesight was
successfully performed. Commerce in human parts, especially kidneys from India
and Pakistan to Great Britain, was by then firmly established, and a clever
network of “production” and commerce in human, especially embryonic, parts
was discovered and publicly defended in the United States, with the media
leading this progress. In
1993, the U.S. government spent millions of dollars on showing TV shots
exhorting its young citizens to carry contraceptives to dates with their
friends. The same year saw the first artificial fertilization of ova taken from
the ovaries of freshly aborted babies, their nourishment in laboratories and
placing in the uterus of infertile women, the start of experiments to bring to
maturity embryos kept in an artificial environment, and attempts to induce a
human ovum to grow by stimulation other than by a human sperm. In the same year,
a way to sex-less reproduction of a human embryo by cellular multiplication was
found -- the same way used by the most primitive organisms -- except that the
division is artificially produced -- cloning.
According to a discovery in 1997, such cloning can be done from any cell
of a body. These methods enable technicians to create series of embryos fed and
maintained in laboratories until they develop observable qualities; those with
unwanted qualities are then destroyed or used for experimentation with various
diseases; the selected ones are imbedded in a human uterus. The
consequences of artificial fertilization, manipulation of genes and cloning of
selected embryos are literally fantastic and unforeseeable. Therefore voices
have been raised that further research in this field and its exploitation should
be controlled by legislation; equally loud are voices claiming that legislators
should not be allowed to make decisions in matters where they lack the necessary
expertise and that further development in human biology should be left
exclusively to experts and to private enterprise and subsidized from public
treasury free of interference. From
the standpoint of scientifically managed breeding of the human race, the
contemporary situation is utterly unsatisfactory -- it is chaos. People
reproduce as they want, they select their breeding partners not according to
their own or their partners' genetic heritage, but according looks, wealth,
position and irrational feelings such as love, compassion, admiration, desire
and passion. This produces an amorphous and unmanageable mass of a variety of
ordinary undistinguished beings with the most diverse grades of intelligence and
health from which only occasionally and accidentally emerge extraordinary,
gifted individuals whose valuable genes become diffused within a few
generations. But a field of the most diverse flowers can in no way equal in
quality and utility a field of uniformly high yield wheat. From the standpoint
of a given technical purpose, it is necessary to eliminate types with
undesirable genes and breed special strains with the highest permanent and
uniform degree of desirable qualities. Unpredictability and variability must be
eliminated by breeding or husbandry. The
introduction of order into the existing chaotic situation and the breeding of
humanity in accordance with the demands (ideals) of its breeders, also known as
the improvement of the human race, is done in two ways: the cleansing of the
genetic inheritance of humanity (eugenics) and the removal of its inferior
individuals (euthanasia). Eugenics The
cleansing of the genetic diversity of the human race consists in measures which
prevent bearers of undesirable genes from passing them on to their posterity. As
with plants and animals, certain traits must be eliminated, other cultivated.
The first step in this direction is the elimination of visibly handicapped
people. So far, this takes place by a very primitive method: preborn or newborn
babies who evidence obviously undesirable characteristics such as spina bifida,
a missing brain or mongolism, are killed or allowed to die. With the progress of
biotics, the time of diagnosing a defect is advanced increasingly towards the
moment of conception, and so is the
moment of aborting fetuses whose genes indicate the tendency towards
physical problems: cancer, tuberculosis, high blood pressure, heart diseases,
leukemia, but also towards certain mental traits or intellectual deficiencies.
The number of genes found to be causing physical and mental deviations is
expected to grow in proportion to the improvement of methods of identification.
The discoveries of such genes do not serve as basis of seeking their cure as
much as the elimination of their bearers to prevent their reproduction. A
perfection of this intervention is the generation of embryos in test tubes.
First a number of embryos is conceived with the help of artificial fertilization
by (selected, quality) sperm; the embryos are provided with nutrients and kept
under observation; at a certain stage a small number is selected and implanted;
the others are used for experimentation or destroyed. The development of
implanted embryos is followed and only the strongest, i.e., those most
corresponding to the standards of biotics, are allowed to mature until birth,
others are discarded. This method of improving the human race is still rare,
because the mortality of the embryos is too high and the procedure too
expensive; but it has a great potential for the future breeding of gifted
individuals from the sperm and ova of outstanding (in terms of physical and
mental health) individuals. Another
method of eugenics are measures aimed at dissuading adults, supposed to have
undesirable genes, from procreation. In certain states applicants for a marriage
license must undergo a physical examination during which the pathologies of
their ancestors are investigated. If a tendency towards inherited maladies is
discovered, applicants are warned that similar problems could appear in their
progeny and they are counselled to use contraceptives or sterilization. Eugenic
effects might motivate also proposals to subject to forced sterilization
criminals guilty of repeated rape, multiple murderers, and single mothers living
exclusively on welfare. The same results have also administrative measures
intended primarily to reduce the population and which induce or force members of
the so-called lowest classes, i.e., practically the poorest members of society,
to use contraceptives or undergo sterilization (in India, men who submit to
sterilization, get a financial subsidy, in Indonesia villages with less than
standard use of contraceptives are refused state's assistance. Euthanasia On
the other side of the cleansing of the genetic inheritance of the human race are
those who are no longer healthy: the
old, the incurably ill, the "vegetative" ones whose lives are not
worth living. For them, euthanasia and assisted suicide are available, with
moral suasion and institutional pressure inducing them to make use of such
choices to achieve "death with dignity" and not to consume selfishly
resources which can be put to better use for those who contribute to society. In
its widest sense, this concept encompasses all methods increasing the quality of
life of a society by removing all individuals who have lost the required
qualities ("have lost the ability of meaningful life"). Either they
are left to die by denial of medical services (passive euthanasia) or are killed
(active euthanasia). Both methods are advocated under the label of enlarging the
number of inalienable human rights by the addition of another right -- the right
to a death (with dignity). In
the United States, so far the most common and legalized passive euthanasia is
performed on the basis of a formal and legally valid declaration that the signer
does not wish his life to be artificially prolonged in case of incurable disease
or insufferable pain -- the "living will." The courts have not yet
decided about the legality of active euthanasia when a physician kills a patient
at his request either by prescribing a lethal substance or performs the killing
himself (by injection or inhalation of carbon monoxide) -- the assisted suicide
or medicide. In both instances, the "termination of life" is (in
theory) performed according to a decision of the victim. In
practice, the "right to die" shades over into an obligation to die.
There is moral and institutional pressure to sign a living will; a refusal is
considered to be a sign of a selfish depletion of limited resources, a pressure
persons seriously ill and dependent on others find hard to withstand. Some
hospitals submit to persons fatally ill or wounded the text of a living will for
signature routinely among other documents needed for admission to the hospital
(insurance, authorization to perform treatment); some hospitals refuse to admit
patients without a living will. If the patient is unconscious or has a guardian,
the decision about denial of medical treatment is made by the family, the
guardian, the court or the bioethical committee of the hospital. The
replacement of the right to die by an obligation to die was advocated several
years ago by a book written by a famous professor of the John Hopkins
University. He recommended that patients who exceeded the "natural
duration" of life (proposed to be fixed at 72 years of age) should be given
palliatives only, no medication. In practice, this principle is already applied
by several public health systems (e.g., in Sweden) openly or factually (former
Czechoslovakia) where ill persons over a certain age were no longer granted
expensive surgeries or other treatments. The
vision of a perfect humanity consisting of a limited number of healthy
individuals who do not outlive the time of their productivity is not only a
question of ideology, but also a matter of powerful economic interests. The
advocacy of euthanasia is based on the use and misuse of especially moving hard
cases to manipulate public opinion by evoking compassion, however, the main
support for this part of biomaterialism comes from different, palpably economic
sources. In the spring of 1996, the media published articles about an extremely
difficult kidney transplant on a baby. The surgeon charged (and later waived) a
fee of $100,000 and the hospital charged $200,000. It is common knowledge that
some doctors prescribe surgery and treatments that are very costly and not
always necessary; the justification of the "right to die" was often
based on the fact that the life of incurable persons was extended by
extraordinary measures even at the price of their pain and suffering -- and a
catastrophic economic cost. This
situation was aggravated by the shift of responsibility and authority from the
family to impersonal institutions -- insurance companies and the state -- which
find a fast performance of the right to die much more economical than protracted
cure. The abortion of a mongoloid fetus is much less expensive than its birth
and lifelong care, and an institution does not and can not take into
consideration the personal ties between family members, which would inspire them
to assume a heavier burden than an accountant of an institution aiming at
lowering expenses and increasing profitability can afford. Ecology The
success of medical and technological progress which improved the health and life
of humans and resulted in an unprecedented growth of humanity created new
circumstances for men, other life forms and the planet. Even the simplest
manifestations of life such as breathing, eating, digesting, eliminating,
sleeping have a marked impact when performed by six billion individuals. The
changes are most dramatic where large numbers of people congregate in small
areas (the expected megacities of the next century). Ecology is dealing with
these changes in three respects: the exhaustion of natural resources, the
destruction of natural environment and the disappearance of certain life forms. The
relative shortage of natural resources
has been with mankind since its beginnings. It has been handled both by
migration accompanied by conquest and by invention of better utilization of
given resources. In more recent times, the question has been raised of an
absolute limitation of resources -- natural resources are finite, and their
increased utilization by man could exhaust them with catastrophic consequences.
The scope of such resources has been measured and the time until their
exhaustion predicted several times, especially as far as oil and certain
minerals are concerned; in the recent past, also the exhaustion of resources
such as air, water, land and ocean has been announced. (31). So far all these
predictions have been proven false, some appear ridiculous after past years of
experience. The reason is threefold: Reduction
and disposal of waste, extraction from waste of usable materials and their
recycling, or conversion into energy, energy conservation and environmental
restoration and control of pollution practiced by the main sources of
contamination, i.e., the industrialized nations, has a growing impact. New
deposits of raw materials are being discovered, and methods to mine and refine
them are constantly being improved. While the earth's resources are certainly
finite, they are flexible: human ingenuity replaces the use of rare and/or
expensive materials by transformation of materials which are abundant and
inexpensive. The core of the planet is composed of metals; sources of energy
from the heat of the earth's core, from the sun and gravitation are practically
inexhaustible. The discovery of energy from fusion rather than fission would
revolutionize the entire economy --
and ecology. The
impact of human multitudes on the environment
stems mostly from industrialization undertaken to serve human needs increasing
both by quantity and by quality. Technology which invented the power to pollute
air, water, endanger the ozone layer has also the ability to undo and prevent
the damage done by human activities; this pollution is sometimes only a fraction
of pollution caused by nature itself, like volcano emissions, impacts of
meteors, forest fires. Ecology
attributes special value to species whose survival is threatened by the
expansion of mankind; if such endangered
species is identified, circumstances favorable to its survival and recovery
are preserved or created by artificial human intervention. The methods are
either transfer of the surviving members of the endangered species to a more
favorable area, or reserving for it an area in which such population can recover
and grow. This protection of certain species has no grounding in nature; both
methods create a pressure on the existing non-human population of the selected
area; carnivores destroy other animals; herbivores consume certain plants; the
choice which animal life is more valuable than others is largely arbitrary. Summary The
prevailing ideology of the elites approaches ecological problems from two
standpoints: (1)
It is preferable to have a small number of people live in an impeccable
environment, rather have large numbers of people live in an environments which
is less than perfect. This approach ignores the law of decreasing relative
utility: the cost of the marginal unit is the greatest, the profit derived from
its expenditure is minimal. To expunge the last vestiges of particles from the
air is so costly that its impact on society is damaging. If, however, the
exclusive goal is to obtain the purest air, then the cost incurred under other
society's objectives is irrelevant. (2)
Humans are considered as another type of animal in accordance with the
postulate of their breeding; therefore, in certain instances, human interest,
livelihoods and sometimes even lives must yield to the interest of (other)
animals. A paradox in endangered species protection are measures prohibiting the
local population from killing certain animals so that they are available for
sportsmen from the rich countries to hunt and kill in order to bring home a rare
trophy. Some
extreme environmentalists ("Animal Liberation") claim outright that
"people are destroying the planet," find certain animals (like pigs)
as more intelligent and therefore more valuable than humans of the same age and
in general that endangered species are to be given preference to men because
"there are too many people." The handling of ecological and environmental problems in harmony with the ideology of individualism is inconsistent with adopting a generally valid and applicable objective to be pursued by means capable of being evaluated under such a goal; individualism's relativism does not permit it, but it has one feature in common with the philosophy of biomaterialism: the solutions are sought in the reduction of the human population, at the expense of the human "species."
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