Population control, Christophobia, and hatred of life

Frank M. Rega has an interesting little essay, "Why they fear Christmas," which begins thus:

Michael Matt's Christmas editorial in The Remnant, "From Bethlehem to Calvary," notes that a burgeoning Christophobia has launched a concerted attack on the birthday of Jesus. Mr. Matt asks just what are these grinches afraid of?

I believe one clue is to be found in the disturbing memo recently made available on the web by Randy Engel at her U.S. Coalition for Life site, www.uscl.info. In this heinous 1969 memo from Planned Parenthood to the Population Council, numerous strategies for controlling world population growth are outlined. The current implementation of many of these proposed policies from forty years ago illustrates the power and influence of the Population Control machine. For example, one of their nefarious schemes is to "encourage increased homosexuality."

Just as I was thinking about this, I remembered a book that a student of mine had recently called to my attention, with the remark that it's thesis was "depressing," which is an understatement. The title -- I am not kidding! -- is Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). The book carries chapters with titles like: "Having Children: The Anti-Natal View," and "Abortion: The Pro-Death View." The fact that the head of the University of Cape Town philosophy department named David Benatar should even undertake to write a book championing his thesis of anti-natalism, let alone the fact that a publisher such as Oxford University Press should be willing not only to seriously consider but to publish such a title, is an indication of just how much momentum we've picked up already on the Culture of Death's greased skids to Hell.

Here's what the editor says about the volume:

Most people believe that they were either benefited or at least not harmed by being brought into existence. Thus, if they ever do reflect on whether they should bring others into existence--rather than having children without even thinking about whether they should--they presume that they do them no harm. Better Never to Have Been challenges these assumptions. David Benatar argues that coming into existence is always a serious harm. Although the good things in one's life make one's life go better than it otherwise would have gone, one could not have been deprived by their absence if one had not existed. Those who never exist cannot be deprived. However, by coming into existence one does suffer quite serious harms that could not have befallen one had one not come into existence. Drawing on the relevant psychological literature, the author shows that there are a number of well-documented features of human psychology that explain why people systematically overestimate the quality of their lives and why they are thus resistant to the suggestion that they were seriously harmed by being brought into existence. The author then argues for the "anti-natal" view--that it is always wrong to have children--and he shows that combining the anti-natal view with common pro-choice views about fetal moral status yield a "pro-death" view about abortion (at the earlier stages of gestation). Anti-natalism also implies that it would be better if humanity became extinct. Although counter-intuitive for many, that implication is defended, not least by showing that it solves many conundrums of moral theory about population.

Near the beginning of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche recalls the ancient myth about King Midas hunting in the forest for the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus. At last, after many years, the King manages to capture him and asks what is "the best and most desirable thing for man." His answer:

Oh, wretched ephemeral race, children of chance and misery, why do you compel me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is -- to die soon. (BT:3 [Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 1224ff])

In many of his other works, Nietzsche makes a point of criticizing Christianity as being, not only "otherworldly," but "anti-earth," of being against life -- at least life in this world. It has been said of some Christians that "they are so heavenly-minded that they are no earthly good." Yet if Mother Teresa's life and the lives of many unsung individuals like her are any testimony, those who are the most earthly good may be precisely those Christians who are most heavenly-minded. Millions of faithful Catholics have an indefatigable record of being pro-life, and Christians generally have been Pro-Existence, as Udo Middelman once argued in a book by that title. By contrast, our contemporary culture has embraced the 'Wisdom of Silenus' with a vengeance. With spokesmen such as Benatar, U.S. President Obama, and Planned Parenthood pulling for anti-natalism in the limelight, it's not hard to imagine what mischief may lay in the offing as these ideas go to seed in popular culture.