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by
Gary Alexander and Ron Horswell
A prophet is not without honor
-
except in his own
century.
Take the case of Thomas Roben Mal·
thus. who.. as economists and prognos–
ticators go. has suffered more abuse
and scorn than just about any modern
prophet. lt was Malthus who first told us
eanh had a population problem.
. Malthusian Mathematics
" 1say that the power of population is
indefinitely greater than the power of
the earth to produce subsistence for
man. " he wrote in the late 1790' s.
"Population. when unchecked . in..
creases in a geometrical ratio. Subsis·
tence increases in an arithmeticsl
ratio." To Malthus. this meant there
was absolutely no hopa for effectively
solving the world's poverty problem.
With the increase in population
today, Tom Malthus has become a new–
bom hero. Curren! literatura abounds
with terms like " Neo-Malthusian,"
" Malthusian Math,.. or " The Second
Coming of Thomas Malthus." Now we
see a new crop of doomsdayers vying
lor Malthus' mantle.
Heilbronner's Causes
of "Worridoom"
In his new book.
An lnquiry lnto the
Human Prospect,
economist Robert
Hei lbronner lists what he feels are
..three main sources, or perhaps levets
of explanation, for the pall that has
fallen over our spirits. "
The first basic source of ''worridoom' '
he calls
topical,
meaning the horde of
disconcening events whose unleashing
we faithfully follow via the various mass
media. According to Heilbronner, " vio·
lence in street crime, race riots. bomb–
ings, bizarra airplane hijackings. and
shocking assassinations.. fall into this
category. which is, of course, headed by
the late great Vi etnam War.
Asecond contributor to
worridoom,
in
the Heilbronner
diagnosis.
is
attitudinal
change, such as ..our startled aware·
ness that the quality of our surround–
ings. or l ife, is deteriorating: · lnto this
second category falls the psychological
impaet
of the ecofogical, environmental,
and energy crises .
Heilbronner identifies the third horse
pulling the
worridoom
troika as
civ–
ilizational malaise.
By this he means the
lailure of the almighty dollar. pound ,
franc, or lndian wampum to truly sat·
isfy. Ooubling Gross National Product
does not double happiness. This civ–
ilization malaise
"reflects
the inability of
a
civilization directed
to material
im–
provement -
higher incomes.
better
diets, miractes of medicine, triumphs of
applied physics and chemistry- to sat·
isfy the human spirit...
That's probably a fairly good way of
categorizing the maelstrom of fore–
bodi ngs through which we must
presently
try
to navigate. And
it
explains
why, although most of us naturally
gravitate toward optimism. we have
come to find a similarity between our
own socrot misgivings und tho thoughts
of a class•c pessimist like Malthus
Computer-Coded Catastrophe
We should have known that in our
compute r age. sooner or later. someone
WEEK ENDINO APRIL 19. 1975