Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Israelis have a high life-expectancy and birth-rate and a low suicide rate. Spengler says this demonstrates hope and happiness:
Envy surrounds no country on Earth like the state of Israel, and with good reason: by objective measures, Israel is the happiest nation on Earth at the 60th anniversary of its founding. It is one of the wealthiest, freest and best-educated; and it enjoys a higher life expectancy than Germany or the Netherlands. But most remarkable is that Israelis appear to love life and hate death more than any other nation. If history is made not by rational design but by the demands of the human heart, as I argued last week , the light heart of the Israelis in face of continuous danger is a singularity worthy of a closer look.
Can it be a coincidence that this most ancient of nations [1], and the only nation persuaded that it was summoned into history for God's service, consists of individuals who appear to love life more than any other people? As a simple index of life-preference, I plot the fertility rate versus the suicide rate of 35 industrial countries, that is, the proportion of people who choose to create new life against the proportion who choose to destroy their own. Israel stands alone, positioned in the upper-left-hand-quadrant, or life-loving, portion of the chart [2]. Those who believe in Israel's divine election might see a special grace reflected in its love of life...
Amazing contrast with the state's enemies, as Spengler notes:
...Israel is surrounded by neighbors willing to kill themselves in order to destroy it. "As much as you love life, we love death," Muslim clerics teach; the same formula is found in a Palestinian textbook for second graders. Apart from the fact that the Arabs are among the least free, least educated, and (apart from the oil states) poorest peoples in the world, they also are the unhappiest, even in their wealthiest kingdoms...
As always, Spengler has much else to say that is interesting.
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About that fertility rate: is that for all people in Israel (i.e., including Muslims)? Or just Jews? Could be a difference, no?
Good question. That 2.7 seems to correspond pretty well for the Jewish rate given in this Haaretz article from a couple years back.
The fertility rate is driven up by the haredi (>9) and Arab (>4) sectors. What people normally think of as "Israelis" don't have a fertility rate much higher than other developed countries.
The unusually low suicide rate is much more remarkable, IMHO.