The People Problem
Potter, Gary
"The People Problem"
...That is, the doctors have already extended life expectancy to the near-limits of the human life span and a lot of folks who, a few decades back, would already be dead, are going to be dying pretty soon...
...One gathers that he regards people, and the "problem" they are said to present, in the same spirit with which he would consider the viruses in his electron microscope and the troubles they cause...
...He is educated by contact with those he meets...
...Buckley deal with rudeness...
...Buckley's way, but for those who can't seem to get anything done, the Buckley way might he the answer: JUST DO IT...
...Fraser does do us a service by titling his book as he has...
...what does, and what I wish I could locate some witty definition of, is irony...
...According to its author, John Klotz, there are many reasons for the ecological crisis among which are overpopulation (though, it seems to me, that the author is unsuccessful in establishing a nexus between overpopulation and environmental decay), an upsetting of the balance of nature re-resulting from an inordinate and indiscriminate introduction of dangerous chemicals into our environment, the exploitation of natural resources and the scientific world view...
...After adopting rather permissive abortion statutes, Denmark and Sweden both experienced an increase in legal and illegal abortions...
...As reported above, the book scarcely deals at all with the actual "problem" alleged by the title...
...The coyness begins with the subtitle, "What You Should Know About Growing Population and Vanishing Resources" (you're supposed to tack on, "But Were Afraid to Ask...
...Well, it does seem likely that a baby today stands a better chance of living to be a hundred than did his grandfather, but he has no better chance of living past that age...
...Terms like population explosion and population control always were too abstract...
...How come Profeser Revilo Oliver thinks Bill Buckley just may be a commie...
...The title, for instance Buckley sails, and as sailors are supposed to know, cruising speed means something nautical...
...If the book were simply a collection of What I Did Last Week, it wouldn't be unworthy of a reader's time, but wouldn't be Buckley...
...Ramsey, Finnis and Noonan each deal with the problem of when it is advisable or right to make a wrong act a crime...
...but I~e concluded after lo these many years that of all the gentlemen I've ever met, two of the most consistently gentlemanly are my father and William Frank Buckley, Jr...
...If you aspire to an understanding of the abortion issue, lay aside the glossy mags and buy or borrow Noonan's outstanding book...
...bone up on The Speech (one of his retinue) just before giving it, instead of agonizing about it for weeks...
...27), he states: "We can predict that some factor or combination of factors will sooner or later control further increase (in population...
...Gary P o t t e r Quite enough, I imagine, is said in this issue by my brother Lobdell, of recollections of Chairman Bill...
...I shy from contact lenses and so Evelynwoody my way through his remarks on his struggle with those things...
...Where does he eat...
...John M. Finnis, professor of law at Oxford, notes that the maternal death rates (per capita) from all abortions were not statistically different in England, where abortion was generally illegal, and Poland where abortion had been '"liberalized...
...One would wonder why he continued with his book after that if it weren't plain that Fraser can't imagine population being naturally limited by any factor short of disaster, the ultimate disaster probably being defined by him as the collapse of technolugy, which would probably -- so he would suppose -- entail the disappearance of the race...
...Why does he talk that way...
...So who listens anymore...
...Buckley listens...
...Legalizing abortion will obviously not save the lives of the aborted and may not even decrease the number of deaths to women from abortion, which have been at a level of about 500 Americans per year...
...Were I to add a few, they might include the night in New York when, after dinner following a taping of "Firing Line," I realized that I had a plane to catch in too few minutes, and he went dashing down the street to hail a cab for me...
...The book is not straight on...
...If I hear another proponent of legalized abortion tell me "you can't legislate morality," I may scream...
...Harvard professor George Hunston Williams proposes a new framework for viewing the interests of the community, the mother and the fetus...
...Not when the sailor himself asks on the last page: "How will I satisfy them, who listen to me today, tomorrow...
...14 The Alternative December, 1971 By John Klotz Concordia, $2.75 This work is an attempt to resuscitate man's sense of responsibility for what has been entrusted to his stewardship...
...Nixon had a little scratchpad on his lap while listening, he had the marvelous feeling that the President was actually listening ~to him...
...For implicit in our willingness to exploit and cause havoc to our environment is, I believe, the scientific world view which provides us with an intellectual justification for our deeds...
...The law educates...
...Fraser, after briefly acknowledging this bit of reality, does not face it...
...But since no one will ever care enough to try to see if I could defy the laws of gravity from off the Empire State Building, I learn far more common things than he learns...
...With that, an end to reminiscences here...
...How does Win...
...before the killing or altering of inconvenient or imperfect members of the human species becomes accepted by the law, those who favor this course should acquaint themselves with the arguments of their opposition...
...I suppose that's what makes Ramsey Clark seem to me so perfectly dreary, and Bill Buckley so otherwise...
...Then the book came and filled in all the gaps and I understood even more...
...About eighty percent of Cruising Speed appeared ex.cerpted this summer in The New Yorker, in two installments...
...He cheats us here, telling us way too little about Patricia Taylor Buckley...
...Others have remarked on the Manichean bias of people-control zealots...
...But of course Pierce told only a slice of the 1ruth, as did Wilde in his definition of a cynic: one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing...
...it is certainly not a serious examination of the alleged "problem" referred to in the title...
...But does the title Cruising Speed here mean something...
...Fraser's book is marked not merely by shallowness and the Manichean spirit, but coyness and heavyhandedhess, too...
...Mostly it's about pollution and the misuse of resources...
...But this is surely a sliver of...
...William Buckle)' is intrigued by the process of education, not just the stuff that goes on these days in classrooms across the land, but the whole manner in which people educate and are educated, especially the latter...
...Punishments generally deter by raising the risk or "cost" of certain acts, yet they are never perfect deterrents...
...The remark on cynicism has nothing to do with this...
...Skinner's way is not...
...Well, some of it's there, ready for one of those inevitable pencil-clutching, tongue<larting, heresy-dreading Buckleyolators to memorize and imitate--if he so chooses...
...they don't have to be perfect deterrents to be worth having...
...Our bodies being the first things to go, I too trudge off to a gym regularly, more regularly than he, to seat and groan and court hernias...
...Not included in the very slim index are such names as Colin Clark, or even Barry Commoner...
...The "problem" is people, in the view of Fraser and others like him...
...This should be kept in mind while listening to the claims of the coathanger-brandishers that opponents of complete legalization are "dooming women to die...
...Good luck...
...Some people, myself included, invariably divide the world into those with the ironic sense and those without...
...Thus, it is people who are the "problem" and must he suppressed, not a technology which is out of control...
...None of their arguments are outlined in Fraser's book, much less answered...
...It is expressed in the familiar terms of so-called geometrical projection, always referred to by Fraser as "exponential expansion...
...As a result, instead of trying to interact with our environment, we indulge in a ruthless and unthinking exploitation of our natural resources...
...of the genetic double helix and the awesome power of the chemical balances which do so much to shape the fates of men...
...One supposes that his students, for students' reasons, have encouraged him to believe he is witty...
...Nor does he deal with other realities, such as: What happens to a co tmtry with so successful a people-control program that it ends with an "old" population and a few young men to run things (apparently Japan is now conThe Alternative December, 1971 15 fronting this situation...
...The risk of death from even a legal abortion multiplied by the number of women who seek abortions indicates there will still be women's deaths, and there will be situations in which women decide to have abortions by non-professionals...
...For instance, type columns while ridin_g in the car, if you have a chauffeur...
...The scientific hubris leads us to believe that the gods of science and technology will -- when the chips are down -- rescue us from our sins...
...He lets us see how he's educated, not without considerable irony, but also with enough concrete examples so that we are not left unsure...
...The heavy hand (and the shallowness)shows in a statement like: "Today's wars are over far more serious matters (than the wars of ancient Greece), such as which of two groups of scoundrels shall rule and rob a natiorl that, by and large, could not care less...
...Of course, the Fraser solution to a real problem like Japan's would be more careful planning, more rigid control, further technical intervention in the life processes...
...Not just because he's polite, but to learn...
...at cruising speed...
...The "problem" is simply stated to exist...
...He's enough of a student of history and literature to eschew naming his book, in imitation of one of the last great scions of America's premier family, The Education of William Buckley...
...Legalizing abortion opens a Pandora's box of problems, ethical and practical...
...The first was delightful but, I thought it incomplete and it took no genius to think this, since the journal plainly told us that it was the first of two pieces, but so what...
...are all attempts to "legislate morality...
...Yet, contradition, he will concede that "'As with other problems that we have considered (most notably water, mineral and energy consumption) this one (garbage) is increasing faster than the population...
...The exiguous bibliography (13 volumes listed) is headed by two Paul Ehrlich books and, such as it is, goes on from there...
...It is most evident in his assumption that all men, no matter what, are always going to desire the technical processes and technological devices that result in the polluted biosphere and ravaged resources which he decries...
...Not only that, very early on in the book (p...
...Cruising Speed is ironic in so many ways that I think it's lost on many readers, those who don't read in and around and through hot just read straight on...
...All show a level of insight lacking in the "you can't legislate morality" school of thought...
...I seem to recall that B.F...
...Who's his favorite pianist...
...Skinner has some sort of contraption in his study by which he records his productivity, day by day, week by week -- year by year -- charting his output...
...What is his wife like...
...if abortion is illegal, one cannot be ordered to get one even if your local social worker thinks it a dandy idea that your "undesirable" or "superfluous" child not be born...
...Laws against killing, stealing, raping, mugging, defranding, extortion, etc...
...The man's faith in technology and technical intervention is evident in his endorsement of the continued widespread use of pesticides and his characterization of the late Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring as "sentimental" and "'gross...
...Hell, how will I satisfy myself tomorrow, satisfying myself so imperfectly, which is not to say insufficiently, today...
...I admire the man Bucldey and like the book, but certainly don't see any resemblance to myself in it...
...Fraser is identified on the book jacket as a virologist...
...Sources in Noonan's book indicate that eighty to ninety percent of the illegal abortions are being p~formed by M.D.'s already and that legalization can be expected to increase significantly the number of women having abortions...
...Cruising Sliced is the iournal of a week in Mr...
...Some reviewers of Cruising Speed appear to be fascin~/ted by How Does Bill Buckley Do All That in One Short Week...
...Numero unius, exclusio alterius, as he would say, so I'll hedge...
...Finnis looks at the results of the restrictive and permissive approaches to controlling abortion in various countries...
...Douglas Cooper Lightweight, no more than a compilation of material garnered from a handful of books and clippings from a few magazines (Sciende, Sdience News, The Sdiences, "Ameri(an SCientist, Sdientific Amerwan), Dean Fraser's book is another recounting of the better-known facts regarding pollution, and these recounted on a superficial level...
...With whom does he frolic...
...Fraser reveals his not only by his title hut when he can remark, for instance, that social attitudes are less lenient regarding premarital sexual intercourse than mere necking because "the difference (between the two) is quite simply that hand-holding does not bring babies, fornication does...
...The cover shows a funny little periscope peeping out of a beautiful body of water...
...The second excerpted half, however, caught me up, made me go back and read the first, and I understood...
...But certainly we're not supposed to think that's all, are we...
...And on we go through these things, some, really, of no importance, though they're nicely recounted, others of greater interest to me, like his rather stylized account of how the magazine gets put together...
...Yes, we all know that men and women go to bed with one another solely to produce offspring, never to express love, or because it's an intense pleasure...
...Some human errors should be prescribed by law, some should not...
...We have adopted the attitude that we can manipulate nature with impunity and force it to do our will...
...Ambrose Pierce defined admiration as the polite recognition of another's resemblance to oneself, and I guess in that case not many could admire Bill Buckley...
...Of special interest to me is the author's notion that the scientific world view has contributed to the ecological crisis...
...That's suitable...
...Haven Bradford Gow ABORTION (continued from page 13) symmetry...
...Read, that ye may be instructed...
...One inevitably gravitates to those sections that treat things dear to one's heart...
...it is persons, individual persons, who are to be "controlled...
...he'd be veritable tiger if anyone tried to shove him under the IRT, as if he'd take the IRT, while I'm only good for a hundred pushups and twelve laps...
...What does he think of Hugh Hefner and Dick Gregory...
...many people, outside academia, equate "it's illegal" with "it's immoral" and "it's legal" with "it's moral...
...The law limits the state and its minions, whose motto (the Bureaucrats Law) often seems to be "all that isn't forbidden is compulsory...
...This world view causes us to assume that man exists apart from nature, indeed, that man is above nature...
...He remarked somewhere, in a column, perhaps, or on a TV talk show, that when he was with Richard Nixon once, and Mr...
...combine things I~e seen him in action, so Cruising Speed offers no surprises to me regarding Buckley's mysterious energy...
...If all abortions were legalized, there would thus probably not be a significant decrease in deaths to women from abortion, while the number of unborn children killed would increase...
...I read his section about his weekly gym session more carefully...
...Buckley's life, not a miniapologia pro vita sua (Heaven forfend) nor a dust-dry diary (and so to bed) nor a reconstruction of some week of crisis (and may he never go through so many that he'll follow in the footsteps of Richard Nixon and tote us through a rehash of his crisis, one by one by one by one), but a most engaging ramble through an ordinary week, so we are to believe, incorporating a great swatch of material from speeches given, letters written and read, various confrontations and the like...
...Then, from time to time, during the recounting of the pollution facts, we are reminded of the "problem" with a statement like: "Every hour we are adding 8,000 people to the human race...not just births, but births minus deaths...
...Others would disagree...
...Ecology Crisis is recommended to those who want to read a serious book concerning the eco]Fogical problem, one that is 'free from the paranoid rhetoric of the ideologues...
...Legislation has several purposes...
Vol. 5 • December 1971 • No. 3
