Posted on 12/26/2008 2:18:47 PM PST by wagglebee
That phrase--surplus population--is what first tipped me off to Dickens' philosophical agenda. He's taking aim at the father of the zero-growth philosophy, Thomas Malthus. Malthus' ideas were still current in British intellectual life at the time A Christmas Carol was written. Malthus, himself, had joined the surplus generation only nine years before. But his ideas have proved more durable.
~snip~
Hitler's hard eugenics and Sanger's (founder of Planned Parenthood) softer one, both owed a great debt of gratitude to Thomas Malthus. So do the zero-growth, sustainable-growth, right-to-die, duty-to-die, life boat bio-ethicists who dominate so much of our intellectual discussion. Malthus turned out to be, ironically, right in some sense. His prediction of mass death has taken place; not because he was right, but because he was believed.
~snip~
Dickens' message is clear enough: The Malthusians of his day did not need evidence (which they ignored every day in the marketplace) or reason. They needed conversion. They needed healing. They needed to be reminded on the day where the world celebrates the birth of a child whom Rome and Herod try to assign to the role of 'surplus population,' that the frightened men who rule the world in the name of scarcity should not be followed, but saved.
Jerry Bowyer is a CNBC contributor. (Forbes.com columnist Nouriel Roubini is away this week.)
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Perfectly stated!
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I like that article. It makes me want to read a Christmas Carol. I’ve seen the movie with Scrooge McDuck but that one probably misses some of the allegory.
In a division of labor society, the effect of population growth is to intensify the division of labor.This leads to a raised standard of living for everyone.
I read it about 30 years ago, but I certainly wouldn’t have picked up on the allegories back then. I’ll definitely take another look.
Don’t stop there! Try Martin Chuzzlewit and Bleak House. If the books are too long, the BBC versions are excellent, though condensed.
I still don’t understand how Dominican University in Chicago could name a street after Malthus on their campus.
'Spirit?' said Scrooge, after a moment's thought, 'I wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these people's opportunities of innocent enjoyment.'
'I!' cried the Spirit.
'You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all,' said Scrooge. 'Wouldn't you?'
'I!' cried the Spirit.
'You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day,' said Scrooge. 'And it comes to the same thing.'
'I seek!' exclaimed the Spirit.
'Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your family,' said Scrooge.
'There are some upon this earth of yours,' returned the Spirit, 'who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all out kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.'
I don’t like to disparage Malthus, because he was neither criticizing nor predicting, just pointing out the obvious at the time. He was inventing a new study, and one that has legitimately continued since his time, and resulted in far more good things than bad.
He also considered and responded to thoughtful criticism from others, and he neither disparaged morality or encouraged vice, just pointed out what their effects are on people. If anything, his writings were to serve as a warning that a harmful situation was developing, and it should be accounted for, or people would be harmed.
How that was to be done, he didn’t speculate. And there were several parts to his study that weren’t known yet.
Perhaps his greatest impact was in the idea of tracking both population, and the food those people needed to eat. This had been done, crudely, since Biblical times, but never before had government been inclined to find out how much food their nation needed.
If there was excess, it could be sold, and if there was not enough, extra could be purchased. In doing so, both human suffering and waste could be substantially reduced.
He asserted that the reason for population growth was virtue, even among the poor. Yet even in good times, this virtue might betray them, because they would have extra children, and this would keep them in poverty.
And he was criticized for focusing on the poor, because he did not realize that when people, in any nation, reach a given economic plateau, they automatically reduce their number of children to just 2 per family. And in doing so, as a whole, they achieve demographic balance, and are far less at risk to overpopulation and starvation.
So the problem he observed, solves itself. Which would have been a great relief to him.
big ideas, ambitious and effective piece. I wish I could pull that off.
I think I'm gonna watch it tonight.
Please indulge me to cite one of my favorite dialogues:
It matters little,' she said softly. 'To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and, if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.''What Idol has displaced you?' he rejoined.
'A golden one.'
'This is the evenhanded dealing of the world!' he said. 'There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!'
'You fear the world too much,' she answered gently. 'All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?'
'What then?' he retorted. 'Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you.'
She shook her head.
'Am I?'
'Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor, and content to be so, until,in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made you were another man.'
-- Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol."
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Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment
Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”
I’ve read all 1000+ pages of Lord of the Rings about 6 times over 4 years, I’m ashamed to say.
What’s the book about? Never mind I can just Wikipedia it.
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