How Civilizations Die - Book 15

Warning! The subject matter in this review is controversial!

Whoever has the most babies, wins! I have said that somewhat jokingly in debates over contraception, abortion and gay marriage. I'm socially conservative about these matters, but when I say that line, it usually kind of startles the other person, at least momentarily. The point I'm trying to make is that after one is done contracepting, aborting and exalting homosexual sex, the people who actually have babies will be taking over the world. Those would be the quiverful Christians, orthodox Catholics, Mormons and fundamentalist Muslims. People who are social liberals focus on 'rights' to the point where they can't see the forest for the trees. That's because they have so divorced sex from procreation they don't even see the two as connected anymore! I never knew if my own personal conclusions panned out in reality, except that I occasionally read about how Europeans are below replacement levels or that the Russians are begging people to have babies because they fear that in a few generations, their civilzation will be gone. So I was intrigued when I cam across this book, How Civilizations Die; And Why Islam is Dying too.

The author is David Goldman, an economist, someone I'd never heard of before (which isn't saying much since I am very ignorant about such things!) who apparently has made a name for himself in conservative circles under the pseudonym Spengler. He apparently was a major force behind the rise of The Asian Times for a period.

Since I don't know diddly squat about economics and demographics, I found all the statistics and number crunching and projections rather baffling. I have no way to really critique what the author asserts. However, I can understand what his premise is and that he is using all these stats to buoy up his predictions.

Goldman's premise is that civilizatons die when they decide not to produce enough children to continue their own culture. This decline in population usually follows the pattern where religious belief has fallen and a secular culture has arisen. European countries exhibit this pattern. Since most European countries are not reproducing enough children, this will lead to all kinds of horrible economic problems because you don't have enough workers, tax payers, etc to keep a country going. Not to mention the loss of that civilzation's culture. As I said, I've heard this particular viewpoint before.

What is surprising is that Goldman cites numbers that show a very sharp decrease in births in major Muslim countries. He specifically talks about countries like Iran, Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey. He goes on to analyze in great detail each country's particular plight. In Iran for example, the birth decline has been happening ever since the Shah in his attempt to secularize Iran and bring it up to compete with the modern West, focused on educating women. Turns out there is a direct correlation, pretty much everywhere, that the more women are educated the less children they have. This makes sense because if a woman is busy getting a degree, it is hard to be bearing children at the same time. But even after the Ayahtollah came back into power and imposed a theocracy on Iran, birthrates continued to decline and drug abuse, alcoholism, and prostitution, especially with the upper class (!) increased. Apparently, Iran has this thin layer of theocracy at the top, but everyone else is disillusioned by the oppression and has basically given up hope. Having children means you are invested in the success of your country/culture. Not having children means something has gone terribly wrong. Goldman goes through each country citing statistic after statistic to illustrate his point. And even further, countries that see themselves on the brink of extinction, as these dramatically falling birthrates play out into reality, means desperate nations willing to take out their 'enemies' as they go down themselves. So this fear of disappearing makes nations more unstable and more willing to do irrational and scary things like bomb everybody else into nuclear annihilation.

Goldman talks about the signifigance of religion in countries which do have more children, like Israel and the U.S. Goldman is a religious Jew and very pro-Israel. He's also very pro U.S. He analyzes both in light of what he considers to be the saving grace (if I may express it that way!) of the Judeo-Christian view of sacrifice and relationship with God vs. Islam's view of sacrifice and relationship with Allah. Of course, he sees Islam has being defective in these regards. Goldman thinks that Islam can not withstand the onslaught of modernity the way that Jews and Christians can. He goes into detail about the Koran and the cultural perspective it creates that makes it so brittle. In fact, the author really delves deeply into history itself, studying the decline of various civilizatons in the past. The reason why Greece fell is because it stopped reproducing enough people to support the armies it needed. The culture of pedestry and the idea that children belonged to the state (as in Sparta) both helped the decline in population. The reason why the Roman empire fell to hordes of Barbarians was because of the huge reliance on slavery and the cultural disincentives to produce many children. At the time, Romans were into homosexuality, infantcide, abortion. The rise of Christians and their rejection of these things, contributed to their growth in numbers. Of course, disease and warfare played a bit part too.

Goldman traces the decline of Europe's population back to the Thirty Years War and the rise of Nationalism. This is where he kind of loses me. I think I wasn't reading closely enough so I didn't quite get the connection. I feel the need to go back and reread this portion of the book. I keep telling my husband, whose degree is in economics and who loves statistics and graph charts, I want him to read the whole book so I can discuss it with him. I just felt like I missed so much in the book due to my own ignorance.

For me the elephant in the room for this book is the fact that the Earth has more people on it than ever before! While certain civilizations are on the decline, to little ole me, that pattern of rise and fall of various populations is probably pretty natural over the millenia of existence. I don't feel the need to panic quite so much. Perhaps this is because I'm Catholic rather than Jewish. Jews have always have to fight against possible extinction. That is the whole history of their people! However, again just for me personally, the best things about Western Civilization, whether it is Ancient Hebrew teachings, Greek philosophy, Roman justice, Medieval theology or Renaissance art is that it is all contained in the history, culture and teachings of the Catholic Church. If that Church is increasing in Africa and South America (which it is), then the world will be fine. The leadership might shift but I don't see annihilation, at least not due to decreasing population in the West, as a threat.

Goldman has great hopes for both Israel and the U.S. because these two Western nations are still having enough children. There were many dire predictions that Israelis would be outnumbered in time because the Muslims around them were having more children. Goldman quotes Arafat as saying that his greatest weapon is the Muslim womb. However, this has not happened. Births are actually decreasing in the Muslim world and the Israelis are having more children. In fact Orthodox Jews have the most children anywhere! By virtue of this fact, the Orthodox population is growing at a much faster rate than other types of Jews. The group that reproduces the least is the secular, liberal Jew.

While secular culture is rising in the U.S. there is still a solid portion of the population who cling to religious beliefs and these people are having enough children to keep our civilization going. I would say that Obama's policies of trying to make contraception and abortion so available is a scary development, but it jives exactly with the secular/religious divide on population. So in the end, I'm hopeful, because socially liberal people will simply not have enough children to continue to be a dominating force, once the baby boomers have passed away. Instead all those big families with lots of kids, and these by far tend to be religious, will eventually rise to dominance. I actually know at least three families where the mother is pro-choice and very socially liberal and yet these families do have at least 4 kids. The moms simply liked being moms so it was their 'choice' to have a 'big' family. However, I know a lot more conservative families that have six or more kids, so just from my own anecdotal sampling, I think Goldman is on to something.

Goldman is a really good writer. Throughout the book, he sprinkles witty aphorisms which he calls Spengler's Laws. This somehow reminded me a bit of G.K. Chesterton. The other thing that impressed me is just how smart Goldman must be! Apparently, not only is he great with numbers when it comes to finance and economics, but he also is fluent in a few languages and almost got a Ph.d in Music Theory! He also obviously knows his history very well. I read several reviews about this book on Amazon and someone called him a polymath. Yep! He is one smart guy! His writing isn't arrogant at all or anything like that, but just the depth of analysis of the material and the expanse of his knowledge is impressive.

All in all, I enjoyed this book. It was a bit over my head because of my own ignorance, but what I could glean from it was illuminating. I'd like to read it again, just to get a better handle on the subject matter.

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