We all have a way of facing life, the world, and other people. We develop a “sense” or a “feel,” a sort of continuing emotion that corresponds to our overall view of life—“it’s a wonderful world” on the one hand, or “life’s a bitch, and then you die” on the other. Ayn Rand called this a “sense of life,” and she describes it fully in her brilliant book, The Romantic Manifesto (which I love).
A recent editorial from the WSJ Editorial Board vividly portrays this in a discussion of the gloomy, doomy Paul Ehrlich, who wrongly predicted in his 1968 book, The Population Bomb, that human population growth would lead to hundreds of millions (including Americans) starving to death over the course of the next decade:
As with Thomas Malthus, the father of gloom-and-doomers, the repeated failures of Mr. Ehrlich’s predictions of catastrophe to materialize never seem to discourage those who believe human beings are breeding and consuming our way to destruction.
The reason these prophecies fail is that they ignore the most decisive variable: human ingenuity. In the years since Mr. Ehrlich’s first forecast apocalypse, human beings have found untold new ways to improve life on earth—e.g., by reclaiming arable land, inventing new medicines, increasing food production, making clean water more available, and lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty.
Operating with what is clearly an irrational and miserable sense of life, Mr. Ehrlich, and others like him in the environmental movement, have had a devastating influence. Buying into their predictions of disaster, politicians the world over have responded with onerous and destructive policies.
Yet against this backdrop of doomsday predictions, entrepreneurs—with their uplifting, inspiring sense of life—continue to make life amazingly better for everyone.
Carl B. Barney
January 6, 2023
If you want some fun, challenge a group to think of all the “disasters-that-never-happened” that the media love to exploit. I did that with some other Objectivists, and we went around the table at least three times. Here are some that I recall:
Global cooling.
Y2K.
Over population.
Acid rain.
Disappearing amphibians.
The Ogalalla aquifer drying up.
Peak oil.
Running out of metals.
DDT.
PCBs.
Phalates.
Cyclamates.
Over population, again.
The ozone layer.
The rain forest disappearing.
Nuclear winter.
The nuclear winter equivalent from the Iraqis lighting the Kuwaiti oil wells on fire.
Over population, again. (It never ends!)
Alar on apples.
We almost lost Detroit. (Nuclear power)
Unsafe at any speed. (Corvair)
Exploding trucks. (NBC)
Nuclear bombs in our cities. (Nuclear power)
Mad Cow disease.
Ebola plague.
Honeybee colony collapse.
Desertification.
Depopulation.
and my all-time favorite –
Comet pills. (In 1910, the earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet. Spectrographic analyses showed cyanide in the tail, so hucksters sold gas masks and other protective devices/drugs.)
When I was a pre-teen the World was supposed to end the next day. My friends and I all went outside to watch, but nothing happened. At that age it was a bit disappointing, but it also jaded me on all forecasts not based on logic. The scary thing to me is that so many people create a pseudo-logic to support their thesis. I guess I’ll just keep getting up each day until I don’t; I’m suspicious the reason I won’t will be more associated with ‘natural causes’.
Dear Carl
You picked a good topic and it can use a broader context. Paul and Anne Erlich along with Richard Dawkins and a prominent Biologist whose name escapes me plus Jared Diamond were all 60’s leftist Hegelians at Berkeley holding that forces of history directed our fates and the main force was Marxism or for Dawkins DNA.
They attacked the individual as the unit of life and history celebrating the collective in support of the cause of history. I led the opposite view at Michigan and got to be familiar with many of the leftist leaders including my editor Tom Hayden.
Keep up the good work.
Bill Altenburg
Quite so.
Indeed, global warming, if it is happening at all, will result in more arable land, which results in more food. More food sounds pretty good to me.
It seems to me that this is a great indication that there is a need for Objectivists to write, and submit, editorials on a frequent basis that illustrate the value of man’s ability to use reason, and that the doom sayers are so often wrong for that very reason, among others. The more we can show that these predictions of doom and gloom are wrong, and that man’s mind is a primary value, the better.
Couldn’t agree more. I will never understand the penchant of so many in this world who hate their lives. They are the constant impediment to those of us who wish to live in a better world. I think, above all else, this is the key to the disaster that is the world. When someone can constantly make the case FOR life and for living it well, and constantly challenge the life -haters for who they are. Then we will start to make some headway. Best I’ve seen so far is Alex Epstein. His approach needs to be broadened and put on steroids so he can’t be ignored. Thank you for this observation
Thank you for the comments. To me, that Erlich has not been held in complete contempt and discarded is an example of left wing nihilism in action. That is, the left rejects both facts and values because they both conflict with their nihilist left wing ideology. To put it another way, the only way anyone can continue to give a creature like Erlich any credence at all is to ignore the facts of human progress while consciously discarding that which makes human life not only rewarding but possible, the pursuit of values. If the WSJ gives any space or content to someone as simultaneously wrong and vile as Erlich, it simply shows how far those running the WSJ have sunk intellectually and morally.