Norms vs. Weeds

 I was listening to a news podcast today, and the hosts got around to a segment on the recent Wall Street Journal article—which also prompted some reflection from me earlier this week—about declining birth rates worldwide. There were four co-hosts in the discussion: two men and two women. And conforming, sadly, to what might be one's worst expectations, the debate over the news article essentially split along gender lines. The men thought that declining birth rates were a huge and obvious problem. The women suggested that we shouldn't rush to that conclusion. 

I (and let it be acknowledged up front, who am also a man) tend to think there is something concerning about these sociological trends—if only from an economic standpoint. This was also the point that one of the two male co-hosts emphasized the most: it creates an enormous fiscal burden on the state, among other things, to have an aging population without a growing pool of working age adults to replace them. The co-hosts did also acknowledge immigration as a fix to this problem—but if the birth rates truly decline all over the globe, this can at best only be a temporary patch. 

But one of the other male co-hosts also insisted on a cultural argument. While disavowing any ideological kinship with the American right or social conservatives, he nonetheless protested that the left ought to take this issue seriously from a cultural standpoint. It reflects poorly on any society, he said, if people do not wish to perpetuate that society into future generations. And perhaps he should have stopped there, but nonetheless, he continued. The left shouldn't be afraid of establishing a social "norm" of childrearing, he said—not an "oppressive" norm, to be sure, but a norm nonetheless. 

What is the difference, though, between an "oppressive" norm and a regular norm? He did not specify. It should be noted, however, that the two male co-hosts on the podcast are both married to women and have children. So they presumably do not find a norm that people should be males in heterosexual marriages that produce biological offspring to be the "oppressive" type of norm. The women on the podcast, however, might beg to differ. Especially any women who have chosen not to have children or get married. Along with any men listening who are likewise single and childless. 

What always raises my hackles in these kinds of debates is the note of righteousness that creeps in among people who are themselves already conforming to these sorts of norms. It would be one thing if they had merely chosen to follow the conventional path of marriage and childrearing. But they also seem to feel very angry that other people are not doing the same. Don't they feel justified enough by their conformity to social expectations? Why must they try to layer guilt on the rest of us too? I am reminded once again of the words of A.E. Housman, in his great poem about social and sexual nonconformity: 

And if my ways are not as theirs/ Let them mind their own affairs./ [...] But no, they will not; they must still/ Wrest their neighbor to their will,/ And make me dance as they desire/ With jail and gallows and hell-fire

Of course, there is an answer to Housman's questions. There is a reason people cannot simply "mind their own affairs." It has to do with the deeply rooted human instinctual need for conformity. Wilfred Trotter, in a book I discussed in more depth in the previous post, describes this as a manifestation of the "herd instinct." Human beings have an element of the gregarious quadruped in their DNA. They seek safety in numbers. Part of our psyche desires the anonymity and protection of the undifferentiated homogeneous mass. We feel safe when every creature around us looks just the same as us. 

To be sure, there have always been nonconformists of various stripes. But Trotter (wonderful name for this topic, I know—more on that in my previous post) points out that these "eccentrics" are not so much exceptions to the herd instinct as they are an alternative manifestation of it. Generally, he writes, every nonconformist, even if they are in the minority relative to society as a whole, will be conforming to the norms of an alternative herd group. The Furry subculture comes to mind, for instance. Trotter would describe such groups as a "herd within the herd." 

What about someone truly outcast and unique in their time, however—someone who has found no community of ideological kindred? What about the stoical lone genius of the Romantics, the Zarathustrian superman—Ibsen's "strongest man [...] who stands most alone"? Even they are probably operating with a hypothetical community in mind. They see themselves as conforming to the norms of some invisible collective: the departed saints, the republic of letters, the great thinkers of the past; or—as Samuel Butler put it, in a great novel of nonconformity, they "live in the lives of those who are yet unborn." 

But, as I also argued in the previous post, a reading of Trotter that looks no further than this emphasis on in-group conformity and homogeneity would be a very impoverished one. Because Trotter also points out that one of the advantages that the "herd instinct" confers on human collectives is precisely that it allows for internal "variability." By joining together in large groups, we can allow individual variations to flourish that might not survive on their own. This allows for the individual members of the collective to specialize, which in turn improves the adaptivity of the herd as a whole. 

It is actually the internal diversity of societies, then—the presence of highly-specialized "eccentrics"—that increases our social strength. This flies in the face of cultural conservatism, of course. The J.D. Vances of the world (whom the podcast's co-hosts cited as the right-wing model to avoid) think that the decline of a default social norm of childbearing is a sign of our society's weakness and internal division. But Trotter gives us reason to think the opposite is the case. It is precisely the fact that our society allows for divergence from the norm that enables us to reap the benefits of specialization. 

If everyone were forced to get married and have kids, by contrast, everyone would be forced to develop only the skills compatible with that lifestyle. We would be robbed of the character types, therefore, that are too lopsided to make way for marriage and children—the ones that would perish if left to their own devices in the state of nature—but who are able to confer one or two exceedingly significant benefits on the larger social organism, because they are protected by the herd from the immediate threats of competition, and therefore better able to focus their efforts. 

We do not need more "norms," therefore, in order to improve our national strength and prosperity. We do not need everyone to get married and have kids. We need the opposite. We need more eccentrics. And so: "Long live the weeds," as Theodore Roethke once wrote in a poem. The garden of society needs its weeds, just as much as—if not more than—it does its upright stalks.