Goodreads review: Healing the Culture

Healing the Culture: A Commonsense Philosophy of Happiness, Freedom, and the Life Issues by Robert J. Spitzer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The faculty of reason should be seen as the common denominator uniting people of various beliefs and persuasions. As rational beings, we have the privilege and obligation to use the discipline of logic and reason in addressing human difficulties and controversies.

Healing the Culture, by Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D., qualifies as a work of reason. Spitzer employs a step-by-step common sense approach to construct a framework of timeless and universal principles, and applies those principles to current cultural crises, especially abortion and euthanasia.

Spitzer begins by defining four levels of happiness. The first level is characterized by immediate gratification, of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. The second level is typified by the comparison mentality, of achieving competitive advantage and bolstering one's ego. The third level goes beyond self, toward seeking the good of others. The fourth and highest level of happiness is derived from giving and receiving ultimate or transcendant goodness -- Truth, Love, Justice, Beauty. These four levels move from the immediate to the enduring, from the shallow to the profound.

Next, Spitzer draws connections between one's view of happiness and one's view of other principles: success, self-worth, love, suffering, ethics, freedom, personhood, rights, and the common good. He treats each of these in depth, but perhaps personhood, when looking at abortion and euthanasia, is the critical point.

All too often, the debate over life issues such as abortion and euthanasia are typified on both sides by political posturing, anecdotal arguments, and emotional pleas. Spitzer's reasoned and methodical approach is both refreshing and extremely important. It is an example of good philosophy that is practical, rational, and engaging.

Using rigorous logic, Spitzer examines various criteria for defining who is and is not a person. Reason dictates that such a definition not be tied to accidental, temporary, or non-essential traits, but that it must depend upon inherent powers and essential attributes, regardless of whether those attributes are currently manifest, dormant, or undeveloped. Spitzer concludes, quite reasonably, that every being of human origin should be considered a person. It is important to note that Spitzer does all this in a way that even an unbeliever would find compelling, providing that said unbeliever is honest, willing to think, and is a person of basic good will. It is also important to note the legal and cultural ramifications of these simple but profound ideas.

Pope John-Paul II repeatedly called upon Christians to build a 'culture of life'. Benedict XVI emphasized the importance of using reason in our dealings with the culture. In my opinion, Healing the Culture fulfills both of these mandates, and is well worth reading, digesting, and sharing.



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Goodreads review: War Against Population

The War Against Population: The Economics and Ideology of Population Control by Jacqueline Kasun

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A host of issues such as poverty, hunger, AIDS, and Global Warming have been attributed by many to the general ill effects of overpopulation. But when the particulars are looked at case by case, no causal connection can be shown. Consider a certain famine, and you find its primary cause is a civil or regional war. Examine an epidemic, and you find that it resulted from widespread sexual promiscuity. Another devastating crisis is seen to come via a combination of political greed, incompetent management, and uncontrollable natural forces. Show me, if you can, a specific, serious human problem that is demonstrably caused by Too Many People. To date, I haven't seen a single instance.

Is there something in the human psyche that demands simplistic answers? ("If we can just solve the overpopulation problem, everything will be OK.") Or do we find dark delight in news of impending doom? Or a secret self-loathing, that readily embraces the notion that we ourselves are the biggest problem? It is interesting to note that population control advocates have nearly always been members of rich, industrialized nations.

A more sinister explanation to consider is that some people are deliberately beating the overpopulation drum to further their own agenda. One extremely well-researched book that explores this possibility is Dr. Jacqueline Kasun's 1988 (later updated) book, The War Against Population. This is not some nutty 'conspiracy theory' work. It is well documented in showing that some very powerful elitists view population control as a key to their political and material interests. To really control people (and their stuff), control their numbers. One well-exposed example is the Nixon Administration's 1974 National Security Council Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200), a.k.a. the "Kissinger Report", and subtitled "Implications of Worldwide Population Growth For U.S. Security and Overseas Interests". Consider just this one citation among many from NSSM 200:

Whatever may be done to guard against interruptions of supply and to develop domestic alternatives, the U.S. economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries [See National Commission on Materials Policy, Towards a National Materials Policy: Basic Data and Issues, April 1972]. That fact gives the U.S. enhanced interest in the political, economic, and social stability of the supplying countries. Wherever a lessening of population pressures through reduced birth rates can increase the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes relevant to resource supplies and to the economic interests of the United States. (NSSM 200, CHAPTER III - MINERALS AND FUEL)

In addition to exposing an anti-population agenda, Dr. Kasun presents a formidable quantity of evidence to debunk the myth - and groundless fear - that we humans are too many in number, or anywhere near too many. Do you find this important? Are you willing to perhaps question the scientific neutrality of many population studies? In the interest of intellectual honesty, I highly recommend The War Against Population as an excellent starting point for such questions.



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100th Pro-lifer

The Hundredth Monkey principle could be applied to almost any ideological interest. I have a specific interest in mind, that of recognizing the need for Pro-life tax resistance.

As seen in this article, there is a Catch-22 dilemna here. It wouldn't take a majority of citizens to mount an effective tax resistance, nor even a majority of Pro-lifers. A few thousand would probably do the trick. The Catch-22 is that those kind of numbers might be there, but nobody wants to be first, so the numbers never get off the ground. As of this writing, there are 12 signatories, a dozen folks who are willing to say "If our taxes are killing innocent babies, then I ain't paying the taxes." At what point does this become a large enough number to attract attention? What is the threshold level that would make this very small movement a groundswell of significance? If a couple thousand were to say, "No abortion taxes - - and we mean No!", I think that would cause a great stir.

More significantly, at what point will you, the reader, decide to add your name to the list? Would you consider joining us if there were, say, 99 people already signed up? How about if only 49 signatures were in place? How about 20? 12?

There are those 12, at least. (My hope, of course, is that, by the time you are reading this, the number will be beyond 12.) At some point, one added name may put us over the "100th Monkey" threshold, and the Pro-life tax strike will become a well recognized phenomenon.

Please consider becoming the 13th (or 14th or 20th or 57th) to sign up.

100th monkey

Ever hear of the so-called "Hundredth Monkey" principle? In simplified terms, it refers to a sort of collective consciousness, especially amongst social animals. The theory is that within a given group of animals, perhaps even throughout an entire species as a whole, the group itself may learn things, may acquire a pool of common knowledge, an awareness shared by all members. This depends upon a certain critical mass (e.g. 100 monkies) within the group. When the theoretical 100th monkey comes to learn something, the critical threshold is met, and the knowledge passes over into collective group consciousness. The whole group now automatically knows that thing without having to learn it one by one.

Very interesting. But this blog writer has something other than monkeys in mind. In human society, this phenomonon corresponds to what we call culture. It is our culture that tells us what clothes to wear, how to speak in certain situations, what behavior is acceptable, and so on. Rather than make a thousand difficult decisions in the course of an average week, the human animal can allow his culture to dictate how to handle those thousand situations. It's automatic; we navigate those events routinely, with little or no deliberation, drawing upon a sort of "group think" or collective consciousness to guide us.

This can work both for good and for ill. A sound human culture can be a powerful incentive toward honest and constructive behavior and a strong deterrent against criminal and immoral behavior. A wayward culture can steer people towards savage behavior. Sometimes the effect can be comical, as when everyone in a given past culture "knew" that the world was supported upon the back of a big turtle.

Now, since a human is much more complex than a monkey, the collective consciousness principle is also more complex in humans. For one thing, a strong individual human may very well operate to some extent against the predominant cultural grain. Similarly, a relatively small group of humans may break away from the mainstream and form a contrary counter-culture. This means that human culture may contain many sub-cultures and sub-sub-cultures, and these separate pools of consciousness may intersect with each other in complex ways. Moreover, human culture is capable of changing in a relatively short period of time, oftentimes quite dramatically. Some past blog posts offer a few thoughts on how human culture may change by small degrees and also by great tidal shifts.

We are at present obviously in the midst of great cultural turmoil. Many cultural assumptions of the past have been discarded, replaced by new and often unprecedented assumptions. Moreover, this appears to be a global phenomenon. Once distinct local cultures are picking up the mores of more dominant cultures, and the world is fast becoming one giant cultural ocean, with a wide variety of sub-cultural pools that are no longer geographically based. It is unclear where this cultural storm is headed.

No cause to disparage the phenomenon itself; it is simply the way we are wired. We are social beings, and this collective consciousness is an integral part of being human. Better to be aware that we are thus wired, and live within that awareness. Know also that we needn't be passive participants, that each one of us has the capacity to affect our culture, at least to some small degree. Better to seek the truth of things, and to possess the mental and moral tenacity to be willing to buck the dominant cultural tide when it is wrong. To be more than a passive follower; to deliberately nudge one's culture or sub-culture toward true values. To be, perhaps, that 100th monkey.