Al Gore and the Weaponized Memes of Doom

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/21/al-gore-branches-out-into-population-control-theory

Imagine a weapon so powerful that it didn't merely destroy your opponents and cause the lamentations of their children, but rather prevented them, and said children from ever being born. Such a weapon would dwarf the impact of actual Weapons of Mass Destruction, which are generally only used in a deterrent role anyway. One might call it a weapon of mass contraception, and such weapons are used, to horrific effect, nearly every day.

Not content with merely pushing Global Warming memes, Al Gore has taken the next step and is now unleashing population control memes. In keeping with his MO, Al Gore himself has four acknowledged children. Remember though comrades in reaction, the accusation of hypocrisy is only a devastating weapon if you control the media battlespace, which we most assuredly do not.

Now, in fairness, his position does have some kernels of truth in it. Pollution, environmental impact, and the like do in fact tend to scale with population, often times in a superlinear fashion. Were his argument expanded to its logical conclusion, we'd expect Al Gore to be strongly opposed to moving people from low income countries into the US. Notice his deafening silence on that score.

The key observation on the particular highly weaponized meme he's putting forward is this:

Who is it pointed at?

I recall different incarnations of such memes being pushed all throughout my childhood and teenage years, especially in a lot of the fiction and movies in the 1970s. The Total Fertility Rates of most groups in the US have fallen significantly since then. Coupled with mass immigration, this has served to significantly reduce the demographic hegemony of me and mine. Therefore I must conclude that said memes are pointed in at least my general direction.

To do a bit of the reduction to the absurd, let's postulate that when the global population crosses 10 billion, Satan will come down to rule the world and precipitate the 'End Times' that televangelists and would-be prophets love to fulminate regarding. Now, is a group or individual attempting to persuade your group to limit its fertility your enemy?

I'd argue yes, they are your enemy, because if your group limits its fertility, that will simply be made up for by other groups who will differentially displace your group. It is like an experiment in artificial selection against those who are easily guilt-tripped through universalist memes. Every group will logically want OTHER groups to limit THEIR fertility---kind of like how most people want others to use public transit so the traffic jams they're in won't delay them as much. Even a universally coercive system a la China's policy won't be applied universally, but rather to favor the politically connected...and guess what...that's most assuredly not us. Were we politically connected we'd pretty much always win when we had the clear majority of the population behind us, and occasionally win otherwise. Call that a functional definition of whether a group is 'connected'---it wins at least proportionate to its demographic weight.

So my exhortation to reactionaries. Scorn the meme whenever it is deployed anywhere near you and yours, and be fruitful and multiply.