David Brooks on "Natalism"
or
Reproduction and the Meaning of Life

[1] Shorter David Brooks:

If you aren't mindlessly striving to overpopulate the planet, you're an ambitious, egotistical, amoral piece of crap.

[2] Longer Shorter David Brooks

For some reason I cannot fathom, I continue to have a soft spot for Brooks. It is becoming more and more clear that this is irrational.

I know it's up against some stiff competition, but this may be his worst op-ed yet. For one thing, it combines a couple of ploys that just drive me nuts. First and least importantly, giving a name to a group or movement that is either too goofy, unimportant, or indistinct to warrant one ("Nascar Dads," "Voluntary Simplicity," etc.)--in this case "natalism."

Second, and more importantly, spinning a tendency that's either neutral or pernicious to try to make it look virtuous. Having too many kids? That's good! We gotta keep driving that population up! After all, there's still some (relatively) unspoiled land left on this earth! Not to mention that we need more consumers. It is a little-known fact that some states have fewer than one strip-mall per square mile. The danger that the population might return to reasonable levels is real, people!

Um, not to mention that there is something distinctly paradoxical about the claim that one's life becomes meaningful as a result of reproduction. If life is meaningless without reproduction, then reproduction is not going to change that--producing another person who will, in turn, have a meaningless life can't make your life meaningful. On the other hand, if life can be meaningful without reproducing, then, well, it's not necessary to reproduce in order to live a meaningful life.

None of this is to say that reproduction can't be an important part of some kinds of meaningful lives, of course, but it probably can't be the centerpiece of them. This is similar to a point that is missed by those who think that it is the fact of our mortality that generates problems about the meaning of life. If your life isn't already meaningful, then more of the same won't make it so. A really long meaningless life isn't meaningful; in fact, it's really, really meaningless...

Perhaps the most amusing (by which I mean angrifying) part of Brooks's essay is his suggestion that those who elect not to reproduce are in the grip of "hyper-individualism." Nice. Suggest we should all pull together and use tax money (e.g.) for child care and we're collectivist wackos who fail to recognize the value of individualism. Decide to have fewer than three kids and we're hyper-individualist wackos who fail to recognize the value of...um...not being too individualistic... Am I out of line in suggesting that just the tiniest dash of consistency might be a good idea here?

Note also that many or most people reproduce either (a) mindlessly or (b) for the selfish reason that it will give them some feeling of immortality. Consequently it's absurd to see Brooks's "natalists" (or, as I'd prefer to call them, "overpopulationists") as inherently more virtuous than the rest of us ("non-natalists," formerly known as "people who don't want too many kids").

Gosh, it's really too bad that there is no way to help my fellow man, nor to contribute to the great project of Western civilization without having tons of kids. 'Cause, you know, I really wanted to help out...

But that was before I found out that humans are little more than bipedal kudzu.

Now I'm not so interested...