The underlying impetus of our modern (moral) crusades is that of utilitarianism, a principle which states that all action should be directed toward achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Such a position is concerned with quantity rather than quality, and therefore seeks not evolutionary but numeric growth. Consider its “progressive” developments:
Humanism: the promotion of welfare for the greatest number is a tenet contra-evolutionary in principle, for it clings to the diseased. Perhaps the most universally accepted form of utilitarianism, this becomes the slogan for those who cannot think holistically, and therefore vitiate their morality to a purely anthropocentric mold.
Populism: political influence for the greatest number subverts any hierarchy and commonsense approach to order so that all can partake of the crumbs of the political pie, and thereby creates out of politics an appeal to the lowest-common-denominator. Special interest groups vie for “political power,” while nothing fundamentally changes in this broken system.
Individualism: mass freedom from authority--which, according to the polarized thinking of individualists, merely seeks conformity--results in disjunction from community and social atomism. This facet of utility is the most ostensibly base, as “happiness”--of mere individuals no less--become the “shared” goal, and no greater ambitions are to be sought.
Collectivism: theoretically granting custody to “the masses,” and ergo, to no one at all, this is the most abstract and utopian of the utilitarian schemas. Collectivism, however, works solely on the level of economics, and therefore does not distinguish itself from the rest of these culturally destructive ideological forms.
Economic growth and population growth are inextricably linked in a cycle of positive feedback. Economic growth is required to support an ever increasing population, yet the population must inexorably increase for the economy to be maintained. What ends up occurring in populations which embrace these utilitarian objectives is that mere sustenance becomes the sole societal priority, and any qualities associated with higher civilization vanish, for there are no resources that can any longer be dedicated to such an endeavor. With utilitarianism, quantity wins. Mediocrity dominates, and any spirit toward ascendancy is crushed, so that life can become “fair.” The diseased, the unintelligent, and the emotionally dysfunctional become the normative; any thing greater becomes a form of dissent, to be leveled.
As a consequence of human population explosions, the natural world becomes denuded. Many life forms fall victim to such human waste, left for crowds to gawk at in natural history museums, but never again able to contribute to our ecosystems as a part of the living earth. Our resources become consumed, at such a rate that humanity must either prepare for radical change, or brace itself as it befalls a similar fate.
In any healthy organism, uncontrolled growth which is not checked by apoptosis, or programmed cell death, leads to carcinogenesis. The cancer of utilitarianism must be eradicated, before it becomes terminal.