Three Democides by False Morality - Part II, The Ban on DDT

(This part follows Three Democides by False Morality - Part I, Holodomor.)

If there is a single idea at the foundation of all contemporary collectivisms, it is that the individual human is merely an organ or a cell of some supra-individual social superorganism. Collectivisms differ as to the identity of this alleged superorganism - family, clan, tribe, state, nation, religion, race, even all of humanity - but they all agree that the only "moral" action for an individual, is action that benefits the designated social "superorganism," even if it harms or kills individual humans, often including the individual for whom that action is alleged to be "moral."

Just as the root of altruism in Western cultures is the Christian doctrine of "Imitatio Dei," applied to Jesus' total self-sacrifice for the sake of sinners, so too the core doctrine of modern collectivisms - the notion that human individuals are mere organs or cells of the body of a collective superorganism - derives from Christian doctrine. It comes from Saint Augustine, who wrote (in Iohannis Evangelium Tractatus, 21[8]) "We have become Christ. For, if he is the Head, we, the members; he and we together are the whole organism." It is on the basis of this doctrine that the Church justifies the extermination of heretics, as no less moral than the amputation of a gangrenous limb for the salvation of the "whole body of the Church." And even as some still healthy flesh may need to be cut off in such amputations, so the faithful Christian must not hesitate to sacrifice, in a crusade against heresy, some lives of the possibly innocent: "Kill them all - God will know his own." This conception of the collective "body of the faithful" as a superorganism was later copied by Islam, and by every collectivist ideology since. In every collectivist "morality," the individual is no more than dispensable flesh (or sacrificial meat) to the collective Superorganism.

Until Rachel Carson and the advent of Environmentalism, appeals to the collective as a "superorganism" always included in that superorganism the biological relatives, and especially the children and grandchildren, of the human individuals comprising the collective in question. Because one's progeny are a genuine value to the individual, this allowed the false morality, of sacrifice to the collective, to be cast as a matter not so much of consent to one's own self-destruction, as one of working for the life and happiness of one's children and grandchildren. The children, and the future, were the central theme in the propaganda of the collectivisms of old. Invariably the "members," or "cells" of the corresponding "superorganisms" were themselves individual human persons. It is this aspect of traditional collectivisms that was transcended by the first American to perpetrate a world-scale democide of her own.

Rachel Carson was a marine biologist and science writer fascinated by the unfolding scientific understanding of the complex web of interrelationships among the many organisms in natural ecosystems. Her fascination with the emerging understanding of biological ecosystems led her into a Platonic reification of the global ecosystem as the ultimate social Superorganism, one that included not only the humans, but every organism on Earth, and their environments as well. This made her particularly aghast at the use of chemical pesticides with the potential to eliminate entire non-human species, such as the insect vectors of malaria parasites and other deadly microorganisms, to save the lives of humans. In Carson's view, this amounted to one kind of cell harming the Superorganism for its own benefit - the equivalent of a global cancer.

Carson set out her view of the global ecosystem as a Superorganism, of which the individual human was at most a disposable cell, in her best-selling book "Silent Spring." The title "Silent Spring" is a masterpiece of bait-and-switch propaganda. It is sane and good for people to enjoy birdsong, and to value a healthy and abundant natural environment for human life. But in the course of the book Carson gradually shifts the viewpoint, so that by its end an intellectually careless reader has been persuaded that the global ecosystem constitutes a Superorganism with an intrinsic moral value far greater than that of individual humans, or indeed of the entire species of Homo Sapiens. Once this viewpoint is assimilated, it becomes a "moral crime" to view the global biosphere as merely a value for human existence, a value that can be technologically improved, by human action, for human benefit. The reader is persuaded, instead, to view the global ecosystem as a single living Superorganism - and that morality consists of subordinating not only one's interests as an individual human, but even the persistence of the human species, to this Superorganism's welfare. Rachel Carson's book gave rise to a new kind of Collectivism, and to a new false morality of unequaled virulence.

Malaria, a disease caused by mosquito-borne parasites, was on the verge of eradication in 1948, the year Swiss chemist Paul Mueller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 "for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods." "Silent Spring" was a best-seller that spawned a mass movement whose first target was the use of DDT against malaria-carrying mosquito populations. The new "ecological" collectivism first grew in the United States, and within 10 years became influential enough to push through a federal ban on spraying DDT (in 1972,) and by 1985 also on manufacturing DDT, even for export. Because malaria was most widespread in countries that lacked the industrial infrastructure to manufacture DDT, the spraying of mosquito populations stopped, and deaths from malaria surged back to between 1 and 3 million per year - between 24 and 72 million to date.

In 2001, demand from countries where malaria was widespread led to a slight relaxation of the anti-DDT regime. In the Stockholm Convention of that year, the use of DDT was authorized - but only for applications that did not threaten the "integrity of the global ecosystem." This means that DDT is only available for indoor use, which can only protect those who live and work in houses with solid walls. The latter include the politicians and diplomats who negotiated the Stockholm Convention. People who live or work outside those walls continue to die.

Three Democides by False Morality continues: Part III, The Ban On Cloning