If the West is suffering from neurasthenia, it might be thought that (parts of) the Islamic world are suffering from defensive mania. The Islamists present themselves as courageous and indomitable warriors, defending Islam from the predations and immorality of the Western infidels. Yet their behavior and the underlying reality suggest that their protestations and violent acting out are defensive in the psychological sense, if not in the geopolitical sense.
In a post on Narcissism, Malignant Narcissism, and Paranoia: Part III, I described the child who has a damaged self and looks to the environment to buttress his self esteem:
A depressed mother, a deprived mother, an immature mother, a drug addicted mother, or a narcissistic mother, (not an exhaustive list) typically has a limited ability to respond to the needs of her child because her needs remain primary. (I do not mean to imply that any child born to a depressed mother, or a substance abusing mother, is doomed. The complex interplay between the child’s inherent disposition and constitution and the quality of his nurturing, from parents, siblings, and other significant people, will ultimately determine his psychological status; to paraphrase Richard Feynman in another context, character development is non-computational.)
The damaged child must find ways to compensate or he will be unable to thrive. He may develop a narcissistic or sociopathic self representation. In our current cultural condition, this can be seen in the aggrandizement of the "gangsta". Rap music uses this image, of the tough thug who no one can touch, as a way to use the external world to support a self image that protects them from the weakness, humiliations, and depression that would affect anyone who feels of little worth; their bravado suggests to some that they have high self-esteem (in fact, many felons have high levels of self esteem as measured by superficial questionnaires) but their language and behavior reveals their sense of themselves as having less intrinsic value. Anyone who needs to demand respect, rather than earn respect, has some fundamental doubts about whether he deserves respect. ... In a more damaged child in a dysfunctional family and environment, the "gangsta", (along with the pimps, hos, and bitches glorified in the music) is more likely to become part of their self representation and ego ideal (who they are and who they want to be), making it much harder to manage their self esteem and function in society. If the community glorifies Rappers who project these self images, it leaves such children with very little to balance against it....
One of the outcomes of this kind of family and environmental (emotional) impoverishment is that such children grow up with minimal reserves of self esteem. They don't feel valued and the need to fend off despair requires them to find ways for the environment (the other) to support their self esteem. Other people become important props who can buttress or threaten their self esteem.
This could as easily describe many Islamist thugs as any inner city "gangsta" (and it is no surprise that Western felons are a prime source of converts.) Since this series is considering the effects of modernity on demographics, it is worth wondering how well such Islamist posturing functions. In other words, is it an effective and adaptive defensive maneuver or does it fail to promote the long term well being of the adherents?
Islam bills itself as the fastest growing religion in the world and Islamic countries have traditionally exhibited very high birth rates. Sharia law supports the maintenance of women in a second class status in which they have few rights. Marital rape is an assumption and abortion is not allowed; in such a setting, high birth rates are not unexpected. However, in two of the exemplars of radical Islam, there are some surprises; from Iran:
Iran leads Middle East population growth decline
The Middle East's decades-long population boom is coming to an end, according to new United Nations data.
In fact, eight of the 15 countries that witnessed the greatest decrease in fertility since 1980 are Middle Eastern, led by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In Iran, the average number of children per woman decreased from 6.50 between 1975 and 1980, to a projected fewer than two from 2005 to 2010.
And the Palestinian territories:
West Bank withdrawal to 'keep country Jewish'
But new study refutes PM's claim, calls Palestinian 'population bomb' a lie... Zimmerman's new study, titled "Forecast for Israel and the West Bank 2025," states a West Bank withdrawal based on demography is groundless because Israel's Jews will more than double Arabs in 20 years.
The study found Palestinians have inflated their population by as much as 1.5 million. It also said Jewish birthrates are far outstripping Palestinian rates, and Israel's own statistics fail to account for even low levels of Jewish immigration when calculating national demographic trends.
The study used numbers documented last year, which placed the current Palestinian-Arab population of the West Bank at 1.4 million and Gaza 1.1 million, for a total of 2.4 million instead of the 3.8 million reported by the Palestinian Authority Central Bureau of Statistics.
Zimmerman's team, comprised in part by researchers Roberta Seid and Michael Wise, found faults in the methods used by the PA to determine its population, including counting the 230,000 Arab residents of Jerusalem twice.
The PA claims a natural population growth rate of 4 to 5 percent per year, among the highest in the world, but Palestinian Ministry of Health records published annually since 1996 contradict the PA's own claim and instead claim actual growth rates averaging around 3 percent.
Zimmerman's study shows how the PA tampered with its own data, retroactively raising growth rates in 2002. His study also shows a steady pattern of decline leading to a natural growth rate in 2003 of just 2.6 percent.
The study also found a dramatic and growing decline in the number of children per Palestinian mother and says Palestinians actually have been moving away from the West Bank and Gaza in contrast to PA claims of large immigration numbers. [All emphases mine-SW]
It is certainly true that modernity, even in the most backward of societies, is accompanied n=by demographic decline as women gain more freedoms, health care improves to the point where parents can expect their children to survive childhood, and parents gain a greater ability to do their own cost-benefit analysis in terms of their future offspring. All of this is true, and applies to such disparate societies as China, Western and Eastern Europe, Iran, Palestinian territories, etc. Yet once children have become a "choice" rather than a biological inevitability, the question of meaning must enter the equation. People who believe in the future will be much more likely to bring children into the world than people who believe that the world begins and ends with them.
I have suggested that the collapse of Communism led to a collapse of meaning in Russia and is contributory to Russia's demographic collapse. I have suggested that the collapse of meaning in the increasingly narcissistic (and solipsistic) West (the death of G-d and His replacement by secular religious beliefs, such as Anthropogenic Global Warming) is contributory to West's demographic collapse. Islam has presented itself as the final ideology, the supplier of all meaning, yet two of the most ideological Islamic societies are in various stages of demographic decline.
The meaning offered by Islamism involves the idealization of death. A society that idealizes death cannot long survive once it people gain the ability to make choices.
It remains an interesting and indisputable fact that the modern societies that continue to grow, that have children and are future oriented, are those societies that embrace life. It is American Christians and Orthodox Jews who still believe in large families. The implications of this are far reaching and should be thought provoking.
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