There’s a point. I don’t know when it happens but it does happen. I can best explain it like this: If someone young and vigorous falls everyone around them laughs and puts it on YouTube. But if a sick or old person falls everyone’s very concerned and tries to help.
I’m a natural mocker. I mock. That’s what I do. When people say and do ridiculous things I point and laugh. But David Brooks’ latest column in the New York Times is such a spectacular fall that I don’t even know if I should laugh. I think I’m starting to feel sorry for David Brooks.
David Brooks of the New York Times wonders what would happen if half the world were sterilized -our half of course because he’d probably be seen as anti-Muslim if he even mentioned the other possibility.
Firstly, doesn’t this guy have editors who tell him that that’s a stupid idea for a column now go and write something that wouldn’t be so appropriate for a science fiction book in the Young Adult section of the bookstore.
But to the point. In the column he writes this paragraph.
If, say, the Western Hemisphere were sterilized, there would soon be a cataclysmic spiritual crisis. Both Judaism and Christianity are promise-centered faiths. They are based on narratives that lead from Genesis through progressive revelation to a glorious culmination.
Believers’ lives have significance because they and their kind are part of this glorious unfolding. Their faith is suffused with expectation and hope. If they were to learn that they were simply a dead end, they would feel that God had forsaken them, that life was without meaning and purpose.
I want to tear it apart. I’m sure Father Z could fisk the heck out of this thing but I’m honestly not even sure what he’s saying here.
Is he saying that people without children can’t be Christian? Is he saying that Christians can’t accept bad things happening. Never mind the Jews. Jews have been through some pretty seriously awful times before without quitting the whole faith.
If you read the rest of his piece it’s not all wrong. But there doesn’t seem to be any final point. I was wondering at one point if he was making an analogy about the slow motion demographic suicide that Western Civilization is committing but he fails to come close to the point. Maybe he backed off making it because he got too scared of sounding like Mark Steyn.
So because I’m at a loss for words I open up wide the doors of CMR and ask you to mock, explain what the heck he meant, or what you think he might have wanted to say but didn’t. It’s up to you. CMR is yours. You’re in the driver’s seat. You’ve got a full tank of gas. There’s some soda in the cooler in the back seat and some chips in the glove compartment. Knock yourself out.
July 28, 2009 at 10:07 pm
He's got it all backwards. A large number of people who are sterilized because of some disease or accident would not experience a cataclysmic spiritual crisis. Instead, the huge numbers of people who sterilize themselves (or de facto sterilize themselves through contraception) are a sign of an already existing cataclysmic spiritual crisis. Do I sense a bit of projecting on Brooks' part?
July 28, 2009 at 10:12 pm
He's being a bit cheeky, I think it's about murdering the unborn and maybe the aged, throw in a bit about our self-centered cultural direction of the past years and……what if?
July 28, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Everyone knows the only reasons to have children are boredom and to diversify your portfolio’s dividends. I mean, they can't ALL hate having absent, self-centered parents, right?
That's the main reason I'm Christian. That and all of those delightful finance metaphors.
July 28, 2009 at 10:57 pm
So wait, are all those people who engage in self induced sterilization feeling that their lives are without meaning and purpose, because their lives are not suffused with expectation and hope? I thought birth control was the answer to happiness. That's what the women's magazines all promote.
Actualy, it just illustrates that he really doesn't understand "Believers" at all. He just thinks he does.
July 28, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Suppose we rendered journalists verbally sterile. In other words, we took away all the journalists' means of communication–all their pens, scratch pads, word processors, typewriters, and rendered them mute…there might be a crisis of secularism. After all, their secularism is based on their own narratives. Journalists' lives have significance because…they say so. But there soon could be a cataclysmic spiritual crisis, with journalists praying to Whomever-can-hear-their inner-thoughts for mercy.
Oh, this is too easy.
July 29, 2009 at 1:42 am
This past year has sbeen an increase in the production and popularity of movies with post-apocalyptic or otherwise dystopian themes. Maybe they're starting to get to him.
July 29, 2009 at 1:43 am
I mean, "This past year has seen…"
July 29, 2009 at 2:25 am
Don't let David Brooks go see 2012!
July 29, 2009 at 2:26 am
If believers' lives would cease to have significance, meaning, and purpose because they are infertile, what about those who are pro-choice? Is he insinuating that part of the purpose of life is to be fertile and multiply? Gasp.
And dibs on the Sprite in the cooler.
July 29, 2009 at 2:34 am
2012? Did you see the second trailer? That was so awesome!!!
July 29, 2009 at 4:42 am
If you'd leave the NYT on the rack between the National Enquirer and Cosmo where it belongs; and left Brooks to get a real job at MacDonalds, you wouldn't be posting such angst about a tenth rate writer in a tenth rate rag.
July 29, 2009 at 5:31 am
Poor guy, he does not even know his geography very well, there are plenty of Christians, mostly Catholic in the Eastern Hemisphere. Also with Australia, Western Civilization, heck even English speaking Westerners extend well past any 180 degree swath of the earth.
Although he makes a point, secular humanism is a purely a PollyAnna-escqe fantasy. He claims the future makes all his pretense of altruism valuable. Yet "if the Lord does not build a house, in vain do its builders labor." Secularism is, on its own terms, hope in a radically improbable promise no one ever or ever has the power to make. Christianity is hope in a sure promise made by God.
A few weeks ago Jupiter was it with a rock that left a crater the size of the Earth. If the next one decides to come a few planets over, all our collective progress towards ending racism will not matter, but how each of loved our neighbor will.
July 29, 2009 at 1:25 pm
"If the next one decides to come a few planets over, all our collective progress towards ending racism will not matter, but how each of loved our neighbor will."
But isn't "our collective progress towards ending racism" simply one way of loving our neighbor?
July 29, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Poor David Brooks probably doesn't have an editor anymore. Because they are tanking, many newspapers are laying off editors and writers left and right, relying on spell check instead of copy editors and the AP instead of their own beat writers for content.
Maybe the editorial board is looking to let Brooks go. Maybe they'll publish his incoherent ramblings until he embarrasses himself so much that they have to fire him.
Someone pass me a Dr. Pepper and the Fritos?
July 29, 2009 at 3:25 pm
"But isn't "our collective progress towards ending racism" simply one way of loving our neighbor?"
In a way yes, but Justice and Charity are virtues which only individuals can posses. Acts of racism are sins against justice. So it is better for society to be less accepting of racism. My point is the modern liberal concept of progress. Here the goal is no longer virtuous individuals but rather certain societal benchmarks. So instead of critical examination of our living the truth of the radical equality of man because of his creation in God's image, we say we need a Hispanic on the Supreme Court.
Racism is not the best example, perhaps a better example is Wikipedia. If an asteroid should hit us, God forbid, that information would not be very valuable. Instead value is found in our treasure in heaven.
July 29, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Mr. Brooks must have recently watched "Children of Men" and tried to pass the idea off as his own. The great spiritual crisis and loss of hope in that movie, however, was due to the fact that women inexplicably became infertile. But such a devastating hypothesis does not relate to the great spiritual crisis already present, as Brian Walden pointed out, from a culture that has intentionally sterilized itself.
Or perhaps is Mr. Brooks giving an argument against the government adopting a policy of FORCED sterilizations/ child quotas?
July 30, 2009 at 2:31 am
"If, say, the Western Hemisphere were sterilized, there would soon be a cataclysmic spiritual crisis."
+Celibates are practically sterilized yet they are the most vigorous witnesses and promoters of the faith.
"Both Judaism and Christianity are promise-centered faiths."
+ The promise is a facet of the faith. Having a restored relationship with God through Jesus Christ captures more of its essence. And that is a current reality for many. In God, we live and move and have our being.
"They are based on narratives…to a glorious culmination."
+It is not based on narratives primarily. Before the narratives were written, there was the witness of the apostles.
"Believers’ lives have significance because they and their kind are part of this glorious unfolding."
+ Life is significant no matter what.
"If they were to learn that they were simply a dead end, they would feel that God had forsaken them, that life was without meaning and purpose."
+ St. Paul wrote something similar i.e. if this world is it then we are most pitiful. But it is not.
July 31, 2009 at 6:28 am
Awesome points, Rick, well said.