Who's Against Zero Growth and Me First?

On Jan 24, 2007, at 17:31 UTC, janet_baker76 wrote:

> This is a very interesting point, and also raises a religious issue:
> which WESTERN religion is anti zero-growth, and still preaches the
> ancient mandate, Go forth and multiply?

Both Catholicism and Mormanism still preach that, though in my
experience Mormons are more likely to take it seriously than modern
Catholics. (But there are exceptions... my wife is the oldest of eight
children from her Catholic parents.)

However, I don't know how important religion is going to be in the
future; trends in most modernized societies suggest to me that
religions will be marginal at best, kept around mainly for their value
as social clubs. And this is as it should be, I think -- too much
mythology clouds the thinking and gets in the way of understanding (see
continuing efforts by creationists to deny evolution, for example).

> Which (hated and hunted) religion would that be, friends?

I'm not sure what you're thinking there. Neither Catholics nor Mormons
are hated and hunted as far as I'm aware, though the latter may get
lots of doors shut in their faces when they go on their recruitment
missions.

> Aside, this list has previously discussed various strategies to
> induce human females to submit to reproduction on the colonies, all
> the way from saying "the birth control pills didn't come on the last
> shipment," to my own favorite solution, that we begin here on earth
> to fight feminism by offering the alternative, best narrated by that
> as yet unnamed religion, which is to restore in all ways the
> romance, the dignity and the privilege of motherhood and monogamous
> love.

What? I must have missed those earlier discussions. Nobody's going to
have to induce people to reproduce; they'll do it naturally, as they
always have. Especially in a resource-rich but somewhat dangerous
environment like space. There's no stopping that, since anybody that
loses the urge to reproduce simply removes themselves from the gene
pool. (Besides, you'll always have parents like me telling the DINKs
how wonderful and fulfilling it is to have kids.)

> every film and book and tv
> talking heads show is pushing zero-growth, zero-growth, in a hundred
> different plots and lyrics and products and every damned thing
> imaginable, always with the same message: whoever has a baby is
> stupid, whoever loves a baby exclusively or a man exclusively is
> stupid.

I don't know what you've been watching, but I certainly don't hear that
message. There are extremists on all sides of every issue, but the
best policy is to just ignore them.

> if you want to make it to the first colony,
> which religion might you be hoping dominates in this epoch?

None. Religions formed to (1) control an ignorant population, and (2)
explain mysteries of the world that science had not yet solved. We no
longer need (2), and the need for (1) is greatest mainly in repressive,
totalitarian regimes (like much of the Middle East). I certainly hope
we won't need them in the future.

> If you still want to say, None, because you like your OWN
> "freedom" so much, you may understand black holes, but not humanity.

You think so? I do have a bachelor's degree in psychology, and a
master's in neuroscience... I've also taken several courses studying
the history of religion (all religions, not just the one you happen to
have been born into). How do you know *I* am the one that doesn't
understand humanity?

Best,
- Joe

Joe Strout -- joe@...