Examining the Culture of Life vs. Culture of Death

Mac: Hey folks, welcome back to the Mac and Mike show. I'm Mac and he's Mike. Today we're going to talk about something a little bit different from our normal topics. Well, I guess I shouldn't say that—what's normal for us? We're about as un-normal as people can get!

What we're going to talk about today is something Mike sent to me: a short video he came across that he thought would make a good topic for us. Basically, you look at the world and you see people in the middle, but you also see people on the left and on the right. This video proposes the concept that everything on the left really comes down to the basic idea of societal order, life and death, and specifically the culture of life versus the culture of death.

I'll let Mike kick it off since he was the one who shared it. I watched the video, and after listening to it, I tended to agree with the guy. What do you think, Mike?

Mike: Yeah, he was talking about psychology, which is kind of my forte. Way back in the day, I was in college for it, and one of the courses was understanding human behavior—which is nearly impossible! We also had courses on neuroscience and how the neurological system works.

His identification was that most people on the left are involved in a psychological issue of low self-esteem and low self-worth, which drives them to support things they don't personally experience in life. They're always standing up for the poor and downtrodden, as they say, but it's really not about that—it's about them. And then he got into all the verbiage changes and the intolerance. They talk about being tolerant, but they're intolerant of anything that disagrees with their view of culture, society, politics, or religion.

I see some similarities on the far right, too—the wackos on the far right. They never really got anywhere in life or achieved things. You and I spent time in the military, and like I was saying to a friend of Genesis who was over at the house the other day—we were talking about our common faith and our shared vacation spot in the Outer Banks—she asked me about myself and suggested I write a book. I realized that, you know, God has used my life for a lot of achievements and a lot of failures too, but it's all balanced out. So I view things as a rugged individualist. You and I don't depend on other people; we support other people, but we don't demand that others do what we do.

That's the thing about the left: they demand. I saw all these protests in New York recently, and I thought, if they spent the amount of time they spend protesting actually helping people—feeding them, giving them shelter—they wouldn't have time to protest! The reason they have time to protest is because they don't have much else going on. The last thing you and I have time to do is go out and protest. We take care of family first, and then other individuals as our abilities allow. We don't protest.

Mac: I saw a short video of a far-left elected official running for reelection who stated: "The lack of having a job should not determine whether or not you have a bed to sleep in." That's a pretty revolutionary idea. Whenever I was growing up and decided to come out on my own, if I didn't earn it, it wasn't there. Once I flew the coop, I was on my own.

The guy in the video spent a lot of time talking about energy and how energy is dissipated as it's used. He was always able to bring these issues back to the central issue of life—and I don't just mean abortion, although that was a big part of it. He talked about same-sex marriage and asked what happens with it: there is no offspring, no next generation, therefore no energy created and no benefit to society. He also brought up euthanasia. Canada, I think, has something like 5% of their annual deaths as euthanasia cases. You would think that would ring an emergency bell, but it doesn't.

Mike: And Dr. Tour, a well-known geneticist, has pointed out that we can't even create the very first inkling of ribonucleic acid without first putting together constituent parts that already exist. It's interesting scientifically when you look at both abortion and euthanasia through that lens.

Another video from the same speaker pointed out that in Canada, 51% of women between the ages of 20 and 49 have not had children. In America, it's approximately 52% between 20 and 40. So we're either killing our elderly, killing our babies, or just not having them, which ties into the declining population in Western society. Western civilization is probably doomed unless we change something.

Mac: Technology is increasing our capabilities faster than we know how to manage them. But as you mentioned, the overall world population is still projected to decline in the next hundred years, meaning there won't be enough people around to take care of the elderly. China and Japan are already facing that heavily.

It gets back to what that guy was talking about regarding the extreme left and life issues. How often do young people today meet and ask, "What's your body count?"—meaning how many sexual partners have you had? When I was trying to find a wife, we didn't talk about past relationships like it was some sort of game. A relationship involving human sexual relations came from love and personal commitment, which builds the fundamental building block of society: the family.

Instead, hookup culture feeds into the destruction of society. Fewer women are having children, partly because many young men don't want to get married—or feel they can't. When young men are taught that just being a man is "toxic," and when jobs are tied to specific demographic quotas rather than pure merit, it holds young men back from success and the ability to provide for a family.

Mike: And women often look for high-achieving men who can provide security. When that changes or expectations shift, 70% of all divorces in America are initiated by women.

Mac: But look at the bigger picture of where technology and society are heading. I saw an interview with Jeff Bezos talking about Blue Origin and why getting to the moon is crucial—because whoever gets there first gets their choice of locations, and launching rockets from the moon takes only 25% of the expense and propulsion as launching from Earth. And Elon Musk projected that in the not-too-distant future, the economy of the moon will be exponentially larger than the economy of Earth.

If that happens, you'll need a massive workforce on the moon. And if human beings are doing that work, I think it's going to be guys. That might be the next big opportunity for young men to pursue space exploration and space colonies.

Mike: You reminded me of the old 1968 movie Mars Needs Women! But seriously, we are often our own worst enemies. Between shifting cultural norms, the decline of family structure, and economic debates—like people blaming affordability for not having children—we see a lot of fundamental shifts. Affordability isn't really the root issue; look at how much larger our homes and cars are today compared to when we were young, not to mention the cost of modern luxuries like high-end smartphones and constant digital entertainment that distracts us from productive life.