America alone parlay 88It isn't that often that I read a book that really shakes me up,
America alone parlay 88
It isn't that often that I read a book that really shakes me up, but this is one such book: America Alone by parlay 88. I can't stop thinking about the implications of what he's saying. I disagree with quite a few of the author's opinions but it's hard to deny his central thesis. The man is a flat-out great writer too, very funny and engaging; he reminds me a bit of PJ O'Rourke before he entered his long and steady decline over a decade ago.
I can't do the book justice in a summary, but the basic idea is that if you straightforwardly extrapolate from present trends, civilization is fucked. For a society to sustain itself without immigration, the fertility rate (average number of children per woman) has to be at least 2, and more like 2.1. Take a look at this fertility map and countries listed by fertility rate and note which societies are committing suicide and which are thriving. If you come in under 2.1 you have to rely on immigration to make up the difference (there is no peaceful way for the welfare state to contract in size) and in most of the world the great majority of immigrants are islamists who have no interest in assimilating. They are essentially conquering country after country from the inside by sheer force of numbers in the same way that mexico is taking back the southwest. And they are not shy about what they intend: though people on all sides work feverishly to obfuscate it, the fact is that islam says the life of an infidel has no value.
In the west, multiculturalism and tolerance are valued so highly (some might say hysterically) that as a society we're blind to the fact that it's a one-way street. Islam has no such tolerance for us. As the book jacket says "The future belongs to the fecund and the confident. And the Islamists are both, while the West - wedded to a multiculturalism that undercuts its own confidence, a welfare state that nudges it toward sloth and self-indulgence, and a childlessness that consigns it to oblivion - is looking ever more like the ruins of a civilization."
More and more, I have come to believe that the future of the human race hangs on one thing and one thing only: whether we can reach the singularity before the enemies of civilization gain enough traction to plunge the entire planet into dystopia. And more and more I fear we are going to lose the race. Kurzweil has predicted for a long time the singularity will arrive around 2040 and I think this is as good a prediction as can be made, but it depends on the continued application of the law of accelerating returns. A few well placed nukes would parlay 88 push the ETA back more than a bit. And if enough of the underpinnings of civilization are smashed, there will be no chance.
My sincere belief that this race is the ONLY thing that matters with respect to the future of our species is why I don't care much about lots of things that people worry about: global warming or other environmental issues, energy consumption, you name it. If the world is to be transformed into a 7th century islamist paradise then I could give a fuck if the ocean levels rise two feet. A precondition of worrying about the future of humanity is ensuring that humanity is worth saving.
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