Neil Postman on Childhood.
Very rough notes and links to things etc:
I’m going to start copying from a book that contains a photograph of Julian Huxley with Margaret Sanger. I know nothing about the author or Foreword writer of the book. I will start copying from it and see where it leads.
‘Breeding Ourselves to Death, 30th Anniversary Edition.
by Lawrence Lader
Foreword by Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich
First printing: March 1971
Special Edition Printing: 2002
‘ THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington
October 23, 1969
Dear Mr. Moore:
The recent series of advertisements placed in
American newspapers by the Hugh Moore Fund
has been gratifying indeed. Your dedication to
easing the problems of world population growth
has led to a significant public service and the
people of the world are in your debt.
I especially appreciate your most recent effort.
Please convey my thanks and my personal regards
to the distinguished citizens who signed the state-
ment, and accept my warmest wishes as you
continue your activities.
Sincerely,
[Signature of] Richard Nixon
Mr. Hugh Moore
The Hugh Moore Fund
60 East 42nd Street
New York, New York 10017′
[I will skip the preface for now.]
‘Foreword
The term “population control” was still generally taboo in the American press at midpoint of the Twentieth Century. Demographers discussed the spectacular rise of population in their cloistered halls. But the public at large was blissfully unaware that mankind faced a problem.
In the early nineteen fifties the Hugh Moore Fund, a non-profit educational foundation, distributed a pamphlet to the press and some 50,000 American leaders in the Who’s Who calling attention to the flood of people engulfing the earth. The pamphlet, of which now more than a million and a half copies are in print, had—and is still having—an impact.
This book sets forth what happened. It is published as a historical record and with the hope that methods and techniques employed by the Hugh Moore Fund may be of use to the growing army of devoted men and women—and organizations—now engaged in the struggle to control the greatest menace of our time.
We must check the present unbridled population growth in order to stop the deterioration of our environment.
Paul R. Ehrlich
November, 1970
…….
ADDENDUM 2001
In the more than three decades since I wrote the above, the world and its approach to the population problem have changed a great deal. On the positive side, birth rates have dropped dramatically in both rich and most poor nations. The drop among the rich has been especially welcome, since it has lessened their already disastrous impact on Earth’s life support systems. On the negative side, world population has soared through six billion, and the United States has clearly claimed the title of “most overpopulated nation.” With more than 285 million people and growing fast, it is now in third place in brute numbers, and with its high level of per capita consumption it is responsible for by far the greatest national share of global environmental destruction. And the sad thing is that population limitation (to say nothing of consumption control) has fallen off the government and public radar scopes in the United States. I hope that this book will help to elevate it again.
Paul R. Ehrlich
November, 2001
…….
BREEDING OURSELVES TO DEATH
The Hugh Moore Fund, organized in 1944 to promote world peace, entered the population field early in the nineteen fifties with a pamphlet whose title provoked instant controversy.
The Population Bomb was
the pamplet’s title and it used the phrase “population explosion” to describe the increasing numbers of people of earth.
That title and the closely associated phrase—both then entirely novel—are today on millions of lips and have become parts of the language, expressing the now widely accepted idea that over-population is the root cause of many environmental and social ills.
“Today the population bomb threatens to create an explosion as disruptive and dangerous as the explosion of the atom, and with as much influence on prospects for progress or disaster, war or peace.” the pamphlet declared.
The booklet’s whiplash phraseology stung a dormant public, and its relentless parade of facts and figures—about booming birth rates, looming famines, zooming taxes, all likely to breed war—made uncomfortable but compelling reading.
The increase in the population of the world has risen from 35 million to 70 million anually since the publication of the pamphlet. It is now recognized that we must reduce birth rates or await the inevitable disaster. We are on the way to breeding ourselves to death.
{Note to self: insert image here}
{Photo image of Dr. Arnaud C. Marts, with this caption:
formerly President of Bucknell University and the
dean of the fund-raising profession in the United States.
As director of the Hugh Moore Fund he was a
sound adviser throughout the years of the Fund’s
activities in the population field.}
While many population experts fifteen years ago grasped the danger, they confined their warnings to erudite graphs for scholarly circles. No one mentioned the impending disaster above a whisper.
“Moore was way ahead of the experts,” Dr. Arnaud Marts, former president of Bucknell University, commented.
The experts, in fact, considered publication of the pamphlet a mistake. John D. Rockefeller 3rd, chairman of The Population Council, felt phrases like “population explosion” and “population bomb” ‘
That’ll do for today, I’ve spent more time being distracted by online articles, rather than copying from this interesting pamphlet. When I begin my research on the life of Julian Huxley, much of it will be done strictly offline, in a public library and maybe a church cafe.
15th December 2021
‘There never was a “population bomb”
Society incorrectly blamed a “population bomb” for problems that had other causes. A wrong diagnosis produces ineffective solutions.’
….
11th April 2022 Anti-natalism: misanthropy on steroids It is really true that a lot of us wish that we had never been born? by Louis T. March
….
4th April 2022 Meet the advertising expert who inspired today’s anti-population propaganda by Peter Jacobson
…
16th April 2022
Hugh Moore, the advertising expert who inspired the current anti-population propaganda by Claudio Fabian Guevara
…
16th Feb, 2022
Who’s Behind the Portland Billboards Demanding People Stop Having Kids? Even in a city accustomed to freewheeling messages, calls for a human breeding ban are unusual.
by Veronica Bianco
…
A System of Sorting
When Congress consulted a eugenicist on immigration policy.