Monday, November 7, 2011

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'How Civilizations Die', D. P. Goldman, 2011, 270 pgs.

Demography and cult irrationality will cause an implosion.

by Ferdinand III


 

 

This is an excellent refutation of Islam's supposedly inexorable advance to world domination. Islam is a pagan fascism, riven with irrationality and brutality; an expression of pre-modern violence and coercion. It can't last. It won't. A disappearing demography and the inherent illogic of the cult of Mecca will ensure that the power of Islam, built in the modern age on the transfer of oil money and Western wealth, will simply implode.

Source:

'The repudiation of life among advanced countries living in prosperity and peace has no historical precedent, except perhaps in the anomie of Greece in its post-Alexandrian decline and Rome during the first centuries of the common era....Loss of Faith. Today's cultures are dying of apathy, not by the swords of their enemies.' and

'What humankind requires is meaning that transcends death.'

Recommended.

This is an excellent book about demography and why some form of real faith matters. Without a true faith [cults are not faith systems], the impulse to reproduce and venerate human life is much reduced. As Goldman relates the modern Malthusian-Ehrlich hysteria about humans and 'overpopulation' focuses on a simple programmatic extension of trends post World War II and a general surging human population [even though North America is 90% empty of humans and development for example]. The supposed inability of humans to feed each other or respect the Earth Mother [neither of which is borne out by reality], leads to various calls of calamity and morbid 'culling' of the human 'herd'. Goldman refutes the commonly held notion that the Earth Mother will be eaten to death by the locust swarm of humanity, with logic clearly outlining why human fertility is falling rapidly everywhere across the world and especially within the Moslem Umma. If demography is indeed destiny then countries as diverse as Germany, Russia, Turkey, Iran and Egypt may cease to exist. The fertility rate beyond 2050 will be well below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. Entire regions will become depopulated generating social, political, economic and military dislocations and perhaps conflict. Losing real faith and optimism in human life apparently has its consequences [not to mention the onward march of socialism, state power and the bankrupted welfare state].

Some of Goldman's more interesting points are:

1) The world's population will fall by as much as 20% between 2050 and 2100. This is about 1.4 billion people or the worst decline both in total and in percentage terms in human global history [my note: the Black Death took 50% of Europe's population in just 5 years from 1347-52, but a far smaller % of the rest of the planet's population.]

 

2) By 2050 the 'belt' of Moslem countries stretching from Morocco to Iran will become as grey as Europe. The Moslem world will have the same proportion of dependent elderly as the industrial countries – but with 10% of the productivity. 'A time bomb that cannot be defused is ticking in the Moslem world'.

 

3) 'Demographers have identified several different factors associated with population decline: urbanization, education and literacy, the modernization of traditional societies....When faith goes, fertility vanishes too. The death spiral of birth rates in most of the industrial world has forced demographers to think in terms of faith.'

 

4) Fertility in the Moslem world has fallen two or three times faster than the world average. The drastic drop-off in fertility has hit Arab, Persian, Turkish, Malay, and South Asian Moslems. By the year 2070, several Moslem countries will have a higher proportion of elderly dependents than Western Europe. And the relative economic burden will be much heavier in the Moslem states.

 

5) The only Moslem countries where women still give birth to seven or eight children are the poorest and most illiterate – Mali, Niger, Somalia and Afghanistan. As female literacy rises, birth rates fall.

 

6) Turkey and Iran have both publicly declared that unless the fertility rates of both states rises sharply, they will 'cease to exist' and will face a demographic disaster beginning in 2038. In both countries the fertility rate is below 2.1. The exception is with the Kurds, who out-breed native Turks by 3:1.

 

7) The average cost to raise a child in America until just the age of 17, is $222,360 according to a 2010 survey by the US Department of Agriculture. Ouch. Add college onto that grand total plus help with buying a first home, wedding dowry's, loan aid......

 

8) In 1950 1/3 of American women were unmarried. Today it is 50%.

 

9) The IMF reports that all Arab countries, including the 80 millions in Egypt, and the oil rich states, cannot pay for their imports and stand at the threshold of bankruptcy. As populations age and fertility continues to fall the financial dislocations will most likely be transmuted into aggressive social, political and foreign policies.

 

10) In Tehran a city of 5 million, there are at least 300.000 prostitutes and in Iran some 5 million drug addicts out of a population of 70 million. When women start selling themselves, countries are doomed or “Spengler's Universal Law #9: A country isn't beaten until it sells its women, but its damned when its women sell themselves.”

 

11) The principle of authority trumping individual rights makes Islam incompatible with Western law and democratic concepts. Islam is a pre-modern code of authoritarian absolutism which enshrines male domination and which includes the killing of infidels, women and young girls in dis-honor killings.

 

12) 'To an extent that other nations share the American love for the sanctity of the individual, they are likely to succeed. To the extent that they reject it, they are likely to fail.'

 

Well said.

 

Note on the author: D. Goldman is a former Forbes columnist who headed global bond research for the Bank of America and other Wall Street groups. He currently writes as Spengler at Asia Times.