The electric light? The West invented it, the West used it. Radio? Ditto. The rotating axis for front wheels? Ditto again. Clocks, Internet, telegraph? Ditto, ditto, ditto.
The West has a powerful tradition of not only making inventions, but also of making them work to its advantage, whether it’s gunpowder or airplanes, television sets or nuclear power.
It’s no small accomplishment. Marshall McLuhan made a name for himself by analyzing “media,” which he defined as extensions of ourselves. The wheel, for instance, is an extension of our legs. The light bulb is an extension of our eyes. The radio is an extension of our ears. All those things are “media.”
The key thing about media, McLuhan pointed out, is that each of them has an effect on us, whether we’re aware of it or not. The effects might be good or bad, and there’s little we can do about it, except be aware and keep our eyes open for the bad.
The West, though, has largely converted the media to its own advantage. I’m not saying the media haven’t had adverse effects as well. Far from it. I think the deleterious effects of the TV, for instance, still haven’t completely played themselves out, and I don’t know what to think of the 24/7 availability obsession of many cell phone users.
But it would seem that the West has, overall, benefited from the media, whether it’s windmills or automobiles. The West has always absorbed the different media. The media influence our culture, but none of them wholly change it, much less dominate it.
At least that’s what I used to think.
Then I started thinking about the condom, the pill, and other forms of birth control. Birth control could be considered media: extensions of our genitals, perhaps. It lets us have more sex, without the restrictions of pregnancy, just as the light bulb lets us read more, without the restrictions of the night.
It’s not surprising that birth control was hailed as a great liberator, especially for women. During the 20th century, nearly everyone praised it. But virtually no one, except a few cranky Catholics, questioned or condemned it.
In that, the West fell into the trap that McLuhan warned about: Be aware that every media has an effect. If you’re not aware of this, the effect is more likely to be adverse.
The West just charged forward with the birth control media, never considering that it could have bad effects and, indeed, scoffing at those, like Paul VI, who said it would. Today, we have the effects: increased divorce rates, increased illicit sexual activity, children without fathers, legitimatization of homosexual activity.
And declining populations.
Europe, everyone surely has heard by now, is literally destroying itself through its lack of babies. An article in the Washington Post last week, for instance, pointed out that in 25 years the number of working-age Europeans will decline by 7 percent, while those older than 65 will increase by 50 percent. The only hope for population growth is the Muslims, and that has its own, cartoonish, problems.
So the media of birth control is single-handedly undoing over 2,000 years of advancement with media. Pretty amazing.
It makes me wonder: Because birth control hasn’t helped anything at all, maybe it’s not even properly considered media. What do you call an invention that doesn’t improve us, but rather destroys us?
I honestly don’t know, though the word “perversion” comes to mind, especially when you consider that the media of birth control has, in a sense, done the opposite of extending us: it has prevented us from extending ourselves through children.
It’s no wonder that the West, which has historically flourished through its use media, is now being killed. It embraced the ultimate anti-medium.
© Copyright 2006 Catholic Exchange
Eric Scheske is an attorney, the Editor of The Daily Eudemon, a Contributing Editor of Godspy, and the former editor of Gilbert Magazine.
