“Europe, at least the indigenous population of Europe, is dying.” says Lord Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, leader of Britain’s Jewish community, on the Telegraph website on Wednesday.
I remember hearing this quite a few years ago, and I’ve never forgotten it because it tells you something very important about people and society.
That is that somewhere out there, there is an automatic mechanism for controlling the nature of people on earth, and the kind of people that are interested in themselves to the extent that they don’t “want children” because they are concerned for their careers or having “enough money” are destined to be a minority.
There are so many benefits to modern society – healthcare, welfare, and care for the underprivileged. However accompanying that is an expectation of convenience and a lack of social responsibility.
Many economic migrants coming into this country to work don’t have the laziness, lack of responsibility, and need for trinkets and perks that many people brought up here have inherited. These migrants are accused of stealing “our” jobs, but they are there for the taking, they simply don’t pay enough for a culture that demands more money, more gadgets, or better cars.
We have more and more of a multicultural society, nobody planned this, no politician made the decision, and there is no conspiracy. It’s simply the natural ebb and flow of the culture of the world. It means that if this (or any other) country has collectively amassed so much wealth by having a free and open society that they simply don’t need to work, then there are plenty of people in the world who are willing to take a slice of the pie, and happily, because they are used to much poorer working conditions, and much less money.
The long-term outcome of this situation is, I think, as the rabbi says. A person can live in relative luxury (compared to the rest of the world), perhaps a few, perhaps millions of people for years and years. But a self-indulgent culture must be ultimately self-destructive if it doesn’t pro-create!
Yeah, really interesting quote- it provokes many really good questions, some of which have been in my head fairly recently.
For starters when I read “indigenous populations” it reminds me a lot of what I have been reading and watching about “race” recently.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/race-and-intelligence-sciences-last-taboo/articles/race-a-history
What is an indigenous population? What is the significance?
Also, I’m reading this cool book at the minute called “Immigrants: your country needs them” Which says very similar things to you about how there are so many jobs in the west which much of the native population perceive as beneath them, yet puts up barriers to hard working migrants who are desperate for any kind of work. It mainly outlines the fiscal advantages for the west of economic migration, but also convincingly argues that from a moral standpoint there should be more not less immigration.
Best argument I read so far: the developed world gives around ~100 billion dollars per year to developing nations as aid – with all the problems associated with fair distribution and political conditionality. The author reckons economic migrants from developing countries send back ~300 billion a year!!!!! – to their families, communities and local economies. (based on data from 2004) Whilst it is probably not a perfect system it seems to me this is something we should hardly be trying to stop!
But I have to disagree with you about your thoughts on procreation! I can’t think of anyone who has babies (deliberately) out of consideration for others! They do it because they want to. It might result in a benefit for others – but that is not the reason. I would guess in developing countries this would be even more the case, where sometimes having children is carried out for future comfort. Isn’t all this selfishness?
Importantly, are those sections of our society not having children (deliberately) the same sections that would complain about immigration?
The point about procreation was the original point of the article I referred to, it’s title is “Europeans too selfish to have children, says Chief Rabbi” and the headline reads “The leader of Britain’s Jewish community claimed the continent’s population is in decline because people care more about shopping than the sacrifice involved in parenthood.”
He’s generalising, and so was I. I don’t have any statistics to hand to “prove” it, but I’ve heard it before.
The immigration issue is a symptom of the same problem (if you want to call it that), and that is that consumerism and what the Rabbi calls “selfishness” do have a long term effect. Can anyone deny that changes that have already come about in our society due to consumerism? The greed and need for more things and more money (Credit Crunch anyone?). And who hasn’t heard numerous times people saying that they don’t want children because of their career or they are simply having too much “fun”.
You’re right nobody has children for the good of society, everyone has their own reasons and/or accidents. But it’s the overall picture that I was talking about.
I find it interesting that whatever the consequences that we can see of consumerism are (good and bad), that the ultimate consequence might be the long-term self-eradication of any culture that embraces it.
That’s not a judgement on anyone, just a observation of life. Like I said I don’t have any statistics that might back it up, but even so it’s not heard to see how it might be happening.