Fundamentals for a Future

I was reading an interview with Michel Houellebecq, which can be accessed here:

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/02/scare-tactics-michel-houellebecq-on-his-new-book/

Mr. Houellebecq is a controversial person in France, and has been tried and acquitted on charges of racism based on his criticism of Islam.  

In the interview, he states the following:

"So the underlying idea, which may really upset people in the end, is that ideology doesn’t matter much compared to demographics."

This remark caused me to descend down a long train of thinking, because he is fundamentally correct.  Political power, to some extent, flows entirely from numbers, even in a non-democratic regime, given the dangers of revolt.  The future belongs to the children of today, and disproportionately to the families of today who have lots of children.  We see today across Europe a decline in birthrates, substantially below replacement, and increasing problems resulting from the need to bring in immigrant populations to keep economies working.  These immigrants, coming from different cultural backgrounds and competing against natives, are increasingly the targets of political enmity.  But the real problem in Europe is not with the immigrants, its with the natives not having sufficient children.

We can ask the demographic question:  what groups have lots of children, and I think we will find that religious families have many children, and secular households do not.  Moreover, the more fundamentalist/traditionalist the family, the more babies.  If we wanted to solve the demographic problem in Europe, which is creating the immigration problem in Europe, there is a simple solution:  promote religious fundamentalism.  At the same time, while we cannot be assured that Europe will not repatriate its immigrants, or even ethnically cleanse them, we are assured Europe will not embrace religious fundamentalism.  So we have to ask why won't Europe embrace religious fundamentalism?  The answer is because Europe is secular, and Europeans states are organized as secular ethno-nationalist states.  A secular ethno-nationalist state will deport or even execute its ethnic minorities, but it will not relinquish its political identity as secular.


There is another aspect of this issue, and that is the nature of religious fundamentalism.  Secular people often can be tolerant or accepting of religion, but they generally draw the line at religious fundamentalism.  What is wrong with religious fundamentalism, that France would rather deport millions of its French citizens of foreign descent rather than adopt it?  The common denominator in most forms of traditionalism and/or religious fundamentalism is an emphasis on traditional gender roles, family, and the importance of female commitment to the generation and care of children.  In other words, patriarchy.

A couple of links in support of this viewpoint:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/2010/12/22/gods-little-rabbits-religious-people-out-reproduce-secular-ones-by-a-landslide/

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-00128-4_8

Can there be any rational justification for patriarchy, for the idea that men have one role, and women another role, and that it is important for men and women to marry and have lots of children?  Likewise, given the increasing research on the adverse long-term health consequences of divorce and single parent families, isn't it time to re-think no-fault divorce?
 
It is obvious that a nation-state, in order to protect itself, must have healthy bodies available for conscription, and the same may be said for a modern economy.  But can the State restrict the choices of individuals, or dictate how they live their lives?  We can see that it does not matter whether patriarchal religion can be justified rationally.  If the State is secular and antagonistic to religion, the population stops having babies, necessitating importing foreigners following patriarchal customs.  Even if it seals its borders, it is a portrait of social collapse, inevitably incapable of protecting itself from its neighbors.  Fundamentalists will always tend push out secularism over a sufficient period of time.  It is similar to money:  if a State spends more than it earns, it must borrow money from a Lender which earns more than it spends.  It is clear that patriarchal religion can exist without secularism, but that secularism can only exist in a parasitic relationship with patriarchal religion.  A secular world can only be a dying world.

Mr. Houellebecq is very pessimistic about the future of feminism.  I agree to the extent that the contemporary ideology of liberal feminism can only be viewed as a demographic anomaly.  Like a disease, it lacks within itself the ability to sustain itself.  At the same time, I do think that it is possible to develop a political viewpoint which addresses many of the political and social concerns of liberal feminism within the framework of a communitarian/traditionalist framework.  For example, there are clear differences between Evangelical Christians, traditional Roman Catholics, and Muslims, and these differences do include differences in their options for women.  If feminism is to survive, it must be a pro-natalist feminism, not a pro-choice feminism.  Further, what is required is not merely government benefits or support for fertility, but a cultural orientation based in a sense of reverence which necessitates its transmission on to future generations.

But it is important to note that just because you are diagnosed with a disease, it does not mean that you necessarily possess the power to cure yourself.  Likewise, even if we recognize that secularism in a political body is analogous to a disease in a body, it is not clear how this disease can be cured, other than to let it die out naturally, similar to Communism.  After all, one can live a perfectly good life within the framework of liberal feminism, you simply can't transmit it in sufficient numbers to make it a viable order for the future. 

The interesting thing in dialoguing with secular individuals is that they use science as the model for truth.  In the sense that if something makes reliable predictions about the future, it is true (or valid).  What is interesting is that evolutionary biologists increasingly are showing that revealed religious teachings are consistent in conferring beneficial evolutionary long-term advantages as well as  health benefits on their members, what we could call blessings.  Religion works, but its description of the world is not consistent with the mechanistic and reductionist assumptions of natural scientists.  Moreover, religion is based on revelation, and has never been justified based on evolutionary biology.  We are to suppose that just randomly, the prophets managed to get it more or less right?  What is wrong, empirical reality or the philosophical assumptions of naturalism? Or is the problem a disconnect between Reality and modernity?