Dooming Doomsday
From Paranoia to Progress
By
Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof
August 19, 2012
I want to begin with a little good news about the human population
explosion. Although our number is expected to officially reach 7-billion next year (if
it hasn’t already) and 9-billion around 2045, the human birthrate is slowing across
the globe and, as author Matt Ridley says, “The ten billionth, it is now officially
forecast, will never come at all.”1 In his book, The Rational Optimist, Ridley, who is
also the respected author of Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters,
goes on to argue that today, “There is no country in the world that has a higher birth
rate than it had in 1960, and in the less developed world as a whole the birth rate
has approximately halved.”2 In Bangladesh, for example, “the most densely
populated large country in the world,”3 the birth rate in 1955 was 6.8 children per
woman. Today it is only 2.7.4 In nearby India, the rate has dropped from 5.9 to 2.6,
and during just the past 20 years the birthrate in Pakistan has also been cut in half
to 3.2 children per woman.5 “Nearly half the world,” Ridley goes on to claim, “now
has fertility below 2.1. Sri Lanka’s birth rate, at 1.9, is already well below
replacement level. Russia’s population is falling so fast it will be one-third smaller in
2050 than it was at its peak in the early 1990s.”6
Although they seem positive, I haven’t begun with these statistics because I
mean to discuss population issues. I’m actually trying to invoke an emotional
response from you, with the invitation to consider your reaction to this rather
optimistic news. Some, like me, might feel cautiously optimistic—optimistic because
we are hopeful the world really is getting better, and cautious because we’re not
sure we can trust Ridley’s facts. Others might be altogether suspect and left
wondering what Ridley’s real motives are. Some might even be feeling defensive and
angry. If information like this becomes widespread, after all, causing us to stop
worrying about this critical issue, it could undermine important birth control efforts
around the world.
Caution, suspicion, doubt, threat, anger—are all common emotions we might
sometimes feel when faced with hope. Hope can be scary. Hope makes us feel
vulnerable. Hope tempts us to put our guard down. It could lead us into a trap. It
might blind us to the truth. It could lead to disappointment and hurt. In fact, I first
learned of Ridley’s book while reading Abundance, another optimistic work, which I
Ridley, Matt, The Rational Optimist, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, NY, 2010, p. 206
Ibid., p. 205.
3 Ibid., p. 204.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., p. 205.
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happened to mention recently before a group of book lovers. To my surprise, one of
those present expressed disdain for what she called, “books like that,” because they
might increase apathy about solving some of the world’s greatest problems and
injustices.
Although I personally believe we should judge books only upon the
soundness of their arguments, and not upon whether or not we agree with their
conclusions, I do appreciate our need to be skeptical in the wake of such optimism.
But just as we must examine the logical validity of any author’s arguments, we
should also question the validity of our own. Do I disagree with Ridley because his
premises aren’t true, or his argument is unsound, or because I’m afraid to admit he
might be right? Or might I agree with him simply because I want him to be right?
One online critic has complained that, “Ridley is telling people—especially
rich, powerful, people, what they want to hear.”7 But again, even if this is true—that
the wealthiest in the world, those who might benefit most by maintaining the status
quo, prefer good news about the way things are—it doesn’t mean what Ridley is
saying is automatically wrong. As people committed to truth and reason, the only
rational response to any argument, especially in light of any feelings of suspicion,
fear, and anger we might have, is to honestly evaluate the facts presented before us.
In this case, it would require us to examine the validity of his statistics.
Unfortunately, his footnotes don’t include his sources for these umbers, which
weakens his argument, but, personally, doesn’t make me doubt their accuracy.
But the real point here is to become more aware of how our own fears might
cause us to be more pessimistic about the future than is necessary. For, as we all
know, most creatures have evolved to instinctively and naturally avoid danger and
pain. Humans are no different. It could even be argued that our species, more than
any other, has evolved to maintain a constant posture of fear. Our bodies look like
fear frozen in place. Even a snake, with no limbs at all, becomes as erect as it can
when threatened.
Humans are among very few bipedal creatures on Earth. Bipedal organisms
are those creatures than can stand, walk, run, or jump on just two legs, and include
other primates, some rodents, birds, lizards, as well as other mammals, like
kangaroos and meerkats. But the big difference between humans and all these other
bipeds is that we remain in the upright position whenever we’re not at rest. All
other bipeds tend to stand erect only for special purpose. The meerkat stands tall to
look over the high savannah grasses for potential predators, then crouches back
down before moving forward. Even the ostrich, which gave up flight so it could
stand taller than all the other bipeds, is famous for sticking it head in the sand. But
humans are always on the lookout, designed by nature to face forward and gaze into
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/jun/18/matt-ridley-rationaloptimist-errors
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the distance for some potential danger, for some lion or tiger waiting to pounce on
us. We are forward looking beings looking forward to danger. This is how we have
survived, and how we have evolved. We lookout for trouble, proceed with caution,
and maintain an innate suspicion of whatever lies before us.
The authors of Abundance, Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, further argue
that we have difficulty being optimistic about the future because our brains are
hardwired to see the negative, especially when coping with the unknown and
uncertainty. Uncertainty about what’s out there gets filtered through the amygdala,
that part of the brain they remind us is, “responsible for primal emotions like rage,
hate, and fear.”8 When it comes to questions of our survival, in particular, they go on
to say the amygdala “becomes hypervigilant,”9 and causes us to see things from a
negative perspective that only fears the worst.
On an individual level such hypervigilance can lead to paranoia, but
collectively such extremism becomes what researchers call apocalypticism, the
widespread belief the world is coming to an end. Since the horrific 9-11 attacks,
researches have stepped up efforts to understand the fundamentalist mindset. The
matter is complicated by the fact that the term “fundamentalist” was first used by
American Protestants to describe themselves, coined by a Baptist preacher in 1920.
Since then it has been increasingly applied to religious extremists of any faith. In
fact, to distinguish themselves from other religions, most American fundamentalists
now prefer the term evangelical instead. So scholars are still trying to sort out those
characteristics common to all fundamentalists, regardless of their particular
religions.
One characteristic, as you might expect, is a tremendous fear of the future. In
their exhaustive six-volume work, The Fundamentalist Project, Professors Martin E.
Marty and Scott Appleby say fundamentalism is defined by the fear of annihilation.10
Building upon this research, historian Charles Strozier has gone on to suggest that in
addition to other traits the fundamentalist mindset can be characterized by
“paranoia and rage in a group context,” and, “an apocalyptic orientation…”11
Some psychologists studying this same phenomenon have concluded this
fear of annihilation becomes extreme early in our lives if we don’t experience
relative security about the future. Daniel Hill, for example, an expert in what is
called Regulation Theory, suggests that if infants or toddlers cannot reliably depend
on their primary caregivers, they tend to become habitually insecure about
everything. When caretaking is optimal, he says, “the child develops a “’window of
Diamandis, Peter H., & Kotler, Steven, Abundance, Free Press, New York, NY, 2012, p. 32.
Ibid.
10 Armstrong, Karen, The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism, (Random House, New
York, NY, 2000. 2001) p. xiii.
11 Strozier, Charles B., Terman, David, M., Jones, James W., & Boyd, Katherine A., The
Fundamentalist Mindset, (Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2010) p. 11.
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tolerance’ in which the system is regulated enough to remain flexible and stable.”12
When this is not the case, however—when this “optimal ‘response flexibility’—does
not develop, the individual regulates itself [find balance] through “either a rigid or
chaotic state.”13 Should rigidity set in, a dualistic framework is sure to follow. “In
insecure attachment states,” Hill says, ‘the bad gets worse and the good becomes
increasingly idealized.’”14 In short, such insecurity about what lies before us can
cause us to become extreme in our thinking and pessimistic about our future.
Such fear, naturally, causes us to feel powerless, which, in short, may quite
simply explain why fundamentalists cluster into groups, because there is power in
numbers. “The paranoid group,” psychoanalyst David Terman tells us, “believes
itself far superior morally but far weaker in any dimension of temporal power than
the destructive group.”15 He also suggests that, “Humiliation is the motivational
basis of the fundamentalist mindset.”16
So we see what can happen if we let our fear about the future and our
feelings of powerlessness take over our personalities and all we do. We can become
rigid, extreme, paranoid, and even join with others who help us validate this
exaggerated mindset. Yet it is possible, if not usual, given a physical posture of
alertness and alarm, a brain designed to look for danger, and a psychological
propensity for exaggerating the negative as a defense against anxiety, that any of us
can succumb to unfounded negativity, even if we are not driven to extremism.
Learning about this human tendency, in fact, has personally made me much less
susceptible to conspiracy theories than I have been in the past.
One example I can think of regards GMOs, genetically modified organisms. I
have long accepted the viewpoint that designer foods, often fearfully called,
Frankenfood, may contain such unseen dangers that it’s better we simply ban them
to begin with. But in reading a plethora of optimists, I’m realizing this conclusion
may have been based more on my fear than on the facts.
In relation to the issue with which we began, for example, population control,
even if Ridley is correct—that our numbers won’t exceed much more than 9 billion
before leveling off and even decreasing—we still need to feed all those people with
limited resources. If this is to be accomplished it will have to be through agriculture,
which, truthfully, has never been completely natural. Farmers have long encouraged
mutations, originally through crossbreeding, and, after Gregor Mendel, the founder
of Genetics, through outright genetic manipulation. As Diamandis and Kotler
explain, “As we began to understand how genetics worked, scientists tried all kinds
Ibid., p. 81.
Ibid.
14 Ibid., p. 84.
15 Ibid., p. 49.
16 See, “The Social Psychology of Humiliation and Revenge,” Bettina Muenster and David
Lotto, The Fundamentalist Mindset, ibid., p. 77.
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of wild techniques to induce mutations. We dipped seeds in carcinogens and
bombarded them with radiation, occasionally inside of nuclear reactors. There are
over 2,250 of these mutants around; most of them are certified ‘organic.’”17 Today,
thanks to modern genetic engineering techniques, we don’t have to eradiate food to
change its genetic qualities. We can design seeds that don’t require plowing or
chemicals to grow, reducing soil erosion and the use of petrochemicals and
herbicides. In 2002, farmers in India adopted genetically modified cotton, and they
went immediately from being a cotton importer to a major exporter, increased their
yields by 50 percent, reducing pesticide use by 50 percent, and nearly doubling their
income to $1.7 billion a year.
Since the year 2000, furthermore, the cost of sequencing plant genomes,
which then took seven years and $70 million, now costs about 100 bucks and takes
only three minutes. Today we can affordably modify food to better grow in hot, dry,
drought like conditions, or add nutrients to high yield rice that can prevent children
from going blind from a lack of vitamin A, or add the omega 3 fatty acids we can
currently only get from fatty foods that lead to heart disease; and all this can be
done while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and not destroying our soil with
unnecessary chemicals.
I’m not suggesting we should move forward without caution, but I am saying
we should not allow our fear to prevent us from moving forward at all. Last week I
watched an astonishing video of a giant 3D printer, created at the University of
Southern California, printing a full-sized house. This process will not only
revolutionize home building, but will make better homes, with fewer resources at a
fraction of their current costs. The technology, by the way, has been invented as a
way to provide homes to homeless people living in disease friendly shantytowns
across the globe.
And, in case you missed it, last week Bill Gates announced an effort to
completely redesign the toilet. Just think about how our reluctance to change has
caused us to continue fowling our water supply, requiring waste treatment facilities
in every city, because we’ve not moved beyond 19th century plumbing technology.
This is also a major source of the water born illnesses that plague many Third World
communities. Waterless toilets, in fact, already exist. They are capable of
transforming our refuse into usable compost, or else “burn the feces and flash
evaporate the urine, rendering everything sterile along the way.”18 Some visionaries
foresee a future in which such toilets actually contribute to the energy grid.
Bill Gates is among a growing number of modern techno-philanthropists
willing to contribute much of their fortune to solving the problems that plague us all,
and are optimistic enough to believe they can! The book, What Are You Optimistic
about is a collection of essays by some of today’s leading thinkers, including Steven
17
18
Diamandis, Peter H., & Kotler, ibid., p. 103.
Ibid., p. 97.
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Pinker, Brian Green, Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, and many others, who are
optimistic that violence is declining, war will come to an end, world peace is going to
be achieved, our energy challenges will be sustainably met, reason and science will
soon triumph, global equality will be achieved, cancer will be cured, altruism will
abound, diversity will be celebrated, and so much more. In fact, Randolph Nesse, a
Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, says, “I am optimistic we will
soon find effective new methods for blocking pessimism.”19
Well, I’m not sure I want to block my pessimism as much as I want to make
certain my pessimism doesn’t unnecessarily block me from moving forward.
Perhaps it is also Bill Gates who provides us the best insight into finding a balance
between fear and progress. On his personal blog, Gatesnotes.com, he actually offers
a review of The Rational Optimist. In it, he praises the book for its strengths,
particularly for the importance Ridley places on the significance of trade in human
progress, and for taking on pessimism in general. But, Gates goes on to ask, “Is his
optimism justified because things always just happen to work out? Or do good
results depend partly on our caring and taking action to prevent and solve
problems? These are important questions, and he doesn’t answer them.”20
I agree with this criticism. Optimism can make us feel as apathetic about
addressing our problems as pessimism can. The point to remember, that Ridley
seems to miss, is that the world hasn’t or isn’t getting better on its own. Slavery,
racism, sexism, and so many other injustices have only improved because people
have taken action, and believed they had the power to make a difference. The
birthrate may be leveling off, as Ridley suggests, but that’s only because many
people have been working to educate others about contraception, and, more
importantly, to raise the standard of living and opportunity for women around the
world. It may well be that Bangladesh has halved its birthrate, but it is still one of
the most impoverished and overcrowded places on Earth. We can’t just sit idly by
waiting for enough people to die off for it to have a sustainable population. We must
act now, as many are, to alleviate the real suffering that exists there today. In
addition, global warming may not be the apocalypse many of us fear, but this will
only be so if we are working together to reduce greenhouse gases.
So, Gates counters Ridley’s simple, “Don’t worry be happy,” strategy with one
his own, "Worry about fewer things while understanding the lessons of the past,
including lessons about the importance of innovation.” To which I might add my
own strategy, “We need both pessimism to remind us that things need to change,
and optimism to help us believe we can change them. So don’t let worry paralyze
Brockman, John, ed., What Are You Optimistic About, Harper Collins, New York, NY, 2007,
p. 318.
20 http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Books/Development/Africa-Needs-Aid-Not-FlawedTheories
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you from making progress, or contentment impede you from taking action. Move
forward, ever forward, remaining cautiously optimistic.”
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