Would You Die For Darwin

Decided to spend some time tooling around in the We Should Live blog. Blogger in residence, Ben Bateman, is a real out of the box thinker. I really liked this post, which I have edited down to the essentials:

Let’s start with the premise that a society built by and for intellectuals has a very limited future. I say that regretfully, as an intellectual, but I see no way to deny it. You could view most of the problems with Communism and its offshoots from this perspective: They all start with intellectuals saying to each other, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if WE ran the world?”

The problem with intellectuals running the world is that most of the challenges inherent to self-perpetuation are not intellectual challenges. They are more often challenges of courage, strength, endurance, or faith. We intellectuals can chatter at each other and read all the books we want, but that isn’t what maintains a civilization. To survive, a civilization’s women must steadfastly endure the risks and hardships of pregnancy, birth and infancy. And its men must be willing to fight and perhaps die on the battlefield in defense of their women and beliefs. Intellectuals aren’t very good at either task.

So here’s today’s theory on why Western Civilization seems to be unraveling, and where it’s likely to stop: A civilization will start to deteriorate when it becomes substantially more complex than the intelligence of its average citizen.

My comment to his much longer post: "I would rather extend your original argument that civilization will unravel when folks are so caught up in their science and other heady pursuits that they are unprepared to take on somebody like the Islamofascists. I am probably far less inclined to die for Darwin than I am for Jesus."