“Capitalism+atheism+feminism = sterility”
Julian Assange tweets:
https://twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/904006478616551425
Helen Lewis responds:
Siri, how could I dogwhistle "western women are too empowered to fulfil their biological function, imperilling the white race"? pic.twitter.com/UNhJic6hKR
— Helen Lewis (@helenlewis) September 3, 2017
Frankly, being below replacement level is not a bad thing in a world that is overpopulated. And if people scream “It’s the economy, stupid” at me, then I will point out that the economy is man-made and can be remade (though it will not be easy, with all the complexity and tentacles of ownership, proprietorship, etc). The ecology of the earth is not man made, and cannot be easily remade. And don’t point me to restoration biology as a rebuttal; I am a restoration biologist, and I know the limits of the field. For all the complexity and overlap of the various parts of the economic machine, the earth system dwarfs that complexity by many orders of magnitude.
And, if the only way to keep an economic system running is to destroy the world on which we all depend, then we need to find a way to live without an economic system. Can’t be done? Maybe. Then fix the damned economy so it is less destructive, and so it doesn’t require endless growth.
Cancers grow just for the sake of growing. Surely we would rather not be like a cancer?
Women’s reproductive systems are public property!
[I’ve just been reading about that idea…]
I remember learning in grade 10 geography that a falling birthrate is a result of higher rates of child survival and better living conditions. So if people hung up by being “overrun” by “foreigners”, they could do worse than to support massive foreign aid (actual aid, not military aid or “tied” aid) to lift these poor people out of poverty.
As humans (and organisms) we’re all in this together. Brilliant, life-changing and life-saving ideas could come from anywhere. The massive human waste caused by poverty with is surely much worse than the pricetag of bankrolling food and education for everyone. Our planetary civilization needs all the help it can get from whomever can provide it. We need to organize our actions on this Earth in such a way that it can continue to nourish and sustain the balance of life upon which we depend. Life is resilient, but human society has not had to go through the stresses we are currently putting our biosphere through. A new, post-disaster equilibrium state might be more favourable to rats and cockroaches than to us. We have to shape up if we want to make it through the self constructed bottleneck we are approaching.
Trump is a perfect example of the need to restructure how we do things as a species. No single individual, particularly one so pathologically unsuited to a position of authority and command, should have so much power and influence over the shape of things. I know it takes a lot of supporters, enablers and collaborators to pull off what Trump has done, but he’s the sharp end of the spear. I don’t know if our politics can be reformed in time to prevent global disaster or not. Our civilization has a lot of built in biases and inertia, making change difficult to manage. Those currently at the multiple steering wheels are trying to drive in too many directions at once, and some of those are to destinations we’d best avoid.
Can’t Assange just stick to the stuff he’s already gotten wrong?
Well apparently Assange was doing his bit to create children, regardless of the woman’s wishes…
Wow it’s almost as though Assange is alt-right and that’s why he lent his support to Trump’s election campaign by undermining Hillary Clinton.
I guess he doesn’t want to touch the “capitalism” and “atheism” parts of the equation, even though it’s probably the capitalism part that’s causing the most damage.
No, no, guys–you’re misreading poor ol’ Julian. Clearly, he’s suggesting that we should encourage atheism, feminism and capitalism (as in, native capitalism, wherein the country actually profits, rather than being used by the colonial powers as resource-grabs) to these other nations, so people won’t want to leave them. that’s what he was going for, right? Right?
*******
Side-note: Countries that are more feminist are attracting immigrants from deeply Muslim and Catholic countries. Almost as if there was something intrinsically appealing about treating other human beings as equals, even if they got ‘girl cooties’.