Chapter 21
Second Introduction
In Adequate Fertility Requires Moderate Kinship, so far, the message is the same as the title, and I would stake my life on it being true beyond all doubt. There are so many independent lines of evidence, and they are so strong, the chance that all the evidence is due to some unknown factor, or that it is some kind of stochastic fluke, is astronomically low, so low that I shall call it a fact. Albeit I have attempted to restrict my efforts to scientific fact ignorance of this fact has had effects beyond infertility per se. The fact is fundamental and almost unknown although it has been subverting our societies for a million years that I can put my finger on, as I shall explain in due course, and almost certainly has been doing us dirt for much longer.
I have a dear family member, who is not shy of talking politics. Once we were talking about what is now called wealth gap, the notion that the middle class is being destroyed, reducing us to a class society of rich and poor with nobody in between. I remarked that I found it amazing that the super-rich would burn up their time on earth in pursuit of ever greater wealth. As you can guess from the subjects of this book, I am so consumed by trying to do something with my precious moment of life that I find it hard to imagine anybody who would not be so passionate, yet experience says rather few care about the world beyond their own span and reach.
My relative remarked that the super-rich wanting to get richer she thought to be a kind of sickness. At the time, I put this down as a figure of speech evoked by her total distaste for such, but now I think she is right, and it goes beyond rhetoric. I shall later explain that the disease is real and point out the very biochemical pathways that mediate it.
Immediate survival focuses the mind. In commercial dramas for entertainment, occasionally a character will be held at gunpoint. It makes for attentive audiences, but I doubt it happens so much in real life. Murderers are either cowards, unable to confront their victim or emotional bubbles worked into such a lather that the proposition, “Do this or I do that,” is beyond their comprehension; in this they are not far from the human mode. I dismiss being held in mortal peril as mostly fiction.
Values in my opinion should be, in order of salience, family – which includes of course, the survival of huwomankind – freedom, peace, prosperity and security. All of these will turn up during our analysis.
If you are a man, tighten your belt or snap your suspenders. If you are a woman glance down and be sure you are beautiful. Prepare to be shaken to the core.