DoktorGlas
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User ID: 1338
I've previously posted on the Motte about the Swedish state-funded Investigative Committee For a Future with Children (Swed. Utredningen för en framtid med barn) with instructions to look into the recent decline in fertility and suggest solutions to the problem. The fourth report dropped a few weeks back, this time focusing on involuntary childlessness and infertility: “Involuntary childlessness: prevalence, causes, treatment and consequences” As before, here's a link in case you know Swedish or want to use an AI to give you the uptake. https://framtidmedbarn.se/rapport/nr-4-ofrivillig-barnloshet-forekomst-orsaker-behandling-och-konsekvenser/
In contrast to the other three reports previously released, this one actually got some major government attention, and shorly after it was made public an extra investment into fertility treatments was announced. That's all well and good, and I'm sure it will help suffering couples – but I am also increasingly worried that the committee is losing the thread. These last two reports (the previous of which focused on economic differences between different family formations) have deftly dodged all the bigger questions at play in this crisis. Biologically-related infertility is obviously an exceedingly small cause of declining fertility, and in any serious discussion it must be pretty far down the list of priorities. I get the feeling this particular issue is getting a whole report's worth of attention not because it's key to a solution, but because it's conveninent and doesn't involve questioning anyone's life choices by wrestling with difficult and dangerous questions.
One of the difficult and dangerous questions I've wrestled with recently is a particular form of dissonance. It might surprise a few of you, but Sweden actually has an extensive Total Defense Duty (yes, literal translation) technically applicable to all Swedish citizens between the age of 16 and 70. Everyone and their grandma really is expected to make significant sacrifices, perhaps even give their lives, in the event of war. In the information pamphlet the government regularly sends out to facilitate crisis-preparation there's a classic mantra (in the more literal Sanskrit meaning of that noun, man-tra, i.e. support or instrument for the mind) that I think has been included since centuries back – alla uppgifter om att motståndet ska upphöra är falska – all reports that resistance is to cease are false. Liberty or death. Noble stuff!
Yet the most central part of ensuring the continued existence of a sovereign Swedish state, i.e. the creation of a new generation of Swedes, is apparently not even a moral, let alone a legal, duty on the part of the citizen? Everyone is expected to die fighting the Russians, but it's wholly acceptable to make choices whose aggregate consequences ends with Sweden going the way of the Dodo? That old Goldfinger-line pops into my head. "You expect me to have children?" "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!" Really, what is the point of this gung-ho never-surrender sentiment, and for that matter all the increases in defence spending in Europe, if we're just going to allow death to conquer us all from within? There are ideas here which should be connected, yet they seem to lie strewn all about in disorder in a way that's both frustrating and disheartening to see.
Apart from that, I'm also not entirely sure unreservedly making it even easier to postpone getting children is truly the right way to approach this problem. Unpopular though it might be among certain cohorts to point out, the solution to declining fertility reasonably also should somehow involve convincing women to have children while they're still young; not enabling every pregnancy to be geriatric.
In short, the material focus in the debate is starting to worry me. I hope that the next reports will be a bit meatier and tackle the larger cultural and ideological questions at play.
DoktorGlas
27d ago
This touches on one of good ol' Spengler's most esoteric distinctions: the difference between truths ("Wahrheiten") and facts ("Tatsachen").
I think the answer to your question – the only real answer – is that knowing a bunch of truths about what makes human faces attractive, about genetic fitness, about fertility and about how an attractive man acts et cetera do not actually help you with the fact that you are unattractive. To quote Oppenheimer from the Nolan-movie: theory will only take you so far.
It's fun for us cerebral minds to figure out what makes the machine tick, and some of the best and most entertaining Youtube-videos I've seen are actually about lookstheory. But it has not helped me with women in the slightest; and since most people are practically rather than cerebrally inclined, they mostly believe that thinking a bunch about theory is the sign of the low-status weirdo.
DoktorGlas
1mo ago
As the great Schopenhauer wrote, from a purely empirical standpoint our existence after death appears to be identical to our existence before being born. Billions of years have passed during which none of us existed. Yet we never question or bemoan the fact that we did not exist in the past, only that we will no longer exist in the future. The only difference between these two periods is this current short intermezzo, and again from an empirical standpoint that barely amounts to a difference at all. I think this strongly suggests that we're overly fearful of death due to some quirk of biological psychology rather than rational reasons; and this suggests that we should temper our fear.
The fact that death causes an entire treasury of memory and a whole Weltanschauung, a whole individuality, to perish in an instant is indeed painful to ponder. But if you've left parts of that individuality behind in writing and deeds then it's not wholly gone; the best parts of us can live on for quite a while. And beyond this loss of individuality, I don't think death stings nearly as bad as one might think.
My view on the matter has slowly become that increasing longevity is the actual root cause of most modern malaise, among the youth and all other groups. I think the biggest inflation-chock the economy has ever known was when we started to regularly live until we were 85 or 90 rather than 65 or 70. We've added more years, but the value of our collective years has depreciated – it's hard to get a house or an apartment, it's hard to get a job, it's hard to do fuckin' anything because doing anything requires time and yet the value of the time has only shrunk. Everyone knows they have a lot of years now so everything keeps getting pushed back, everything costs more time because we keep living longer and longer and longer and thereby we fool ourselves into thinking we have more life to live since we have more time to spend.
And yet life to live is the thing we don't have, because youth and fertility and energy and capacity for enjoyment and beauty, and everything that actually makes more time worth having is fleeting and adding more time whittles it away like water erodes the cliffside. I once had a friend tell me to discount beauty when looking for a girlfriend, because all beauty eventually fades. But everything fades, everything is transient and everything is slipping away like Kansas' famous dust in the wind. A Buddhist would call this attachment to wordly things folly and point out that it inflicts दुःखम्, duhkham, and indeed, if impermanence is a valid counterargument then all is disproven. But assuming it is not, it's clear that more years doesn't neccessarily mean more living. Yet we keep throwing good years after bad ones, day after day.
One day soon, sooner than we would all like, the extension of our lifespans, coupled with the women's liberation movement having liberated women from all previously taken-for-granted aspects of womanhood, could very well mean that large parts of the world might well be populated primarily by people who cannot perform any meaningful labour and who are thus reliant on other people working for them to continue living. But as the great Kipling wrote:
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?
I still think we can sort the problem out, but I don't think the main problem for today's youth is AI.
DoktorGlas
2mo ago
I've previously posted on the Motte about the state-funded Swedish Investigative Committee For a Future with Children (Swed. Utredningen för en framtid med barn) with instructions to look into the recent decline in fertility. The Committee is now back with its third report, “The Power of the Purse: Economic standard in households with and without children”. Since the Culture War thread has been rather uncultured this week due to the very real war in Iran, I thought I’d pop in with this tiny smörgåsbord of demographic cultural war-data. As before, here's a link in case you know Swedish or want to use an AI to give you the uptake. https://framtidmedbarn.se/rapport/nr-3-planbokens-makt-ekonomisk-standard-i-hushall-med-och-utan-barn/
This one unfortunately isn’t very interesting, and the key take-aways are mostly things you absolutely already know. For example, were you aware single mothers have lower economic standards than other households, and that they also receive bigger portions of their income from various welfare-sources? Shocking, I know. And did you know that DINK-couple (Double Income, No Kids) who never become DICKs (Double Income, Couple o’ Kids) have more disposable income than other groups? Yeah, revelations such as these are what you can expect reading this and as insight porn goes it’s not very titillating. This particular report is also on its tippiest tippy-toes around the larger questions at play here, and it has little to say regarding what kind of fertility we want to increase and what economic policies would help with what. Every franchise has a dud, I guess.
Still, there was one interesting part that stuck with me on page 15 wherein the report summarizes the fertility rate of Swedish women per age group. Given current trajectories, we’ll soon see women aged 40-44 out-reproduce the 20-24 cohort! Mostly it’s the 20-24 year old women who aren’t having children, but there's a slight rise in 40-44 year old mothers. It’s a very striking figure and the Swedish is not difficult; I actually recommend you take a gander for yourself.
It’s well known that the risk of a child developing Down’s Syndrome increases with advanced maternal age, and it also increases risks for the mother. Honestly though, I secretly wonder if the greatly increased risk of chromosomal abnormalities and other pregnancy-related issues are just the tip of the iceberg. This big flashy debilitating stuff might be a canary in the coalmine for all sorts of more subtle and insidious adverse long-term effects for children born to geriatric pregnancies. We already know increased paternal age can cause a variety of subtle and bad mutation. Depending on how bad geriatric pregnancies and advancerd paternal age are, we’re in for real trouble since convincing both men and women to have children while young is going to be a hard sell.
Question for this report: is the advancing age of parents worse for children than we think, or are these fears unfounded? What kind of childrearing households, if any, should the state promote with its economic policies?
DoktorGlas
3mo ago
It's just a fun acronym – lighten up, I don't mean anything by it.
I've previously posted on the Motte about the state-funded Swedish Investigative Committee For a Future with Children (Swed. Utredningen för en framtid med barn) with instructions to look into the recent decline in fertility. Recently the Committee released its second report more closely detailing the root cause of the decline – which women are not having children anymore? As before here's a link in case you know the Swedish or want to use an AI to give you the uptake. https://framtidmedbarn.se/rapport/nr-2-fran-hoga-till-sjunkande-fruktsamhetstal-hur-ser-situationen-i-sverige-ut/
The focus of this report is a lot narrower than the previous one which means there are fewer fun takeaways. Two facts stand out. There's been a lot of speculation about coupling not working, people delaying childrearing so they are unable to get that third child, et cetera, but the report doesn't bear any of these concerns out. Men and women are still moving in together, but the major driver of the decline is that there's a growing cohort in which the couple never decides to have kids. A lot of DINK-couple (Double Income, No Kids) are no longer as eager to become DICKs (Double Income, Couple o' Kids) as they used to be. This fact is concerning because I have a suspicion it has a strong potential to rapidly initiate a self-replicating demographic spiral. DINKs have more resources compared to DICKs, and if more people choose to stay DINKs then life for DICKs will probably become even harder, which in turn will lead to even fewer DICKs. I think the carrot for DICKs probably won't be enough here: society probably also needs to put a dent in the wallet of the DINKs, maybe throught some tax scheme, to encourage more childrearing.
Beyond that the report also has a few tidbits of interest here and there. The common narrative of a foreign underclass quickly and decisively outbreeding the native population isn't quite on the mark for example, as the report points out that second-generation immigrants tend to have about as many children as natives (first-generation is another story, and a large part of the very justifiable demographic anxiety in Europe). On the other hand that also means immigration cannot possibly solve the issue long term or even medium term; while many children of immigrants often learn Swedish quite poorly, commit more crimes than average and remain largely unintegrated for vast periods of time, they at least seem to take our individualistic childless culture to heart.
This is less meaty than the previous post on the subject, but I think that's enough to bring some fodder for discussion. What do you think should be done to support our DICKs? Should DINKs be made to pay to make their lives easier? Is the reports take naive on the questions of immigration and demography?
This is a common retort, but I don't think it's nearly as good a 'gotcha' as it seems at first glance.
I grant you the entire underlying premise here: let's say pregnancy, childbirth et cetera really is so plain fuckin' awful that women won't go through with it in required numbers unless coerced, and any man with empathy ought to shut his pie hole about this whole demography thing. I won't contest it at all. You win that round.
It seems to me, however, that the most relevant part of the preceding idea, is unless coerced and ought. Well, not everyone does as they ought, and there are still men in the world who do not shy away from coercing women. And wouldn't you know it – their countries also have exceptionally high fertility! Afghanistan for example has a current fertility rate of around 4 children per women. That's enough for a continued quite impressive growth well into the 22th century, and the Talibans are showing no signs of giving up. Indeed, the official position of the Taliban government is that contraceptives and feminism are a Western plot to destroy the country – and if we grant you your premise they are absolutely correct and will indeed win out in the long run: longer if we're lucky, shorter if we're not. The Afghan goat-herder inherits the Earth while the last European lies whittling away in a retirement home because he took your advice and didn't complain.
I honestly don't see how you get around these implications without resorting to artifical wombs or some similar sci-fi tech, and this view on female psychology and willpower is damning, well beyond the most extreme misogynist positions I have ever heard espoused. Given that, I think I'll keep complaining.
Earlier this year the Swedish government appointed a state-funded Investigative Committee For a Future with Children (Swed. Utredningen för en framtid med barn) with instructions to look into the recent decline in fertility and what it portends for Sweden going forward. Yesterday the Committee released its first report detailing the potential consequences of lower fertility, aptly titled The Silent Crisis. Here is a link on the off-chance you know Swedish, or on the very on-chance you want an AI to give you the key takeaways: https://framtidmedbarn.se/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Nr-1-Den-tysta-krisen.pdf
Really though, the key graph is on page 18 and you don't need to know Swedish or have Grok ready to read it, because it's more or less shock horror demography-gore. Given current (or, if you look at the orange graph, slightly worse) trends without mass immigration the Committee estimates a whopping 40% decrease in the Swedish population by 2100. In actual numbers this brings the population down from a small-but-respectable ten million Swedes to about six million which roughly corresponds to the Swedish population in the year 1940. Unlike what was the case in 1940 though, the relative quality of the population will be vastly inferior, and will in large past consist of 80+ seniors mostly incapable of doing serious productive work and in need not only of constant and large transfers from the working-age population via taxes, but also significant care efforts in homes for the elderly. The Committee estimates that every working citizen in the worst-case scenario will need to finance no less than 1.6 other people. The last but not least horrifying part is the merciless shift in public spending: many municipalities will have to downsize schools and kindergartens in order to build more homes for the elderly, which in turn reinforces the circle of demographic disaster and suicide. Instead of happy children playing in kindergartens we'll have non-sentient dementia patients as the primary receivers of care in our society! There is a real risk of not only Sweden, but every corner of the West, becoming a wasteland of retirement homes.
I recently read Untergang des Abendlandes by Oswald Spengler and I really am quite struck by some of the similiarities between Spengler's moody prophecies and what seems to happening all over the West (and most of the westernized world). Somewhere in all the gobbledygook about the historical meaning of numbers or whatever Spengler theorizes that demographic decay is ever a symptom of a civilization beginning to die. The picture he paints is one of eine entsetzliche Entvölkerung, a terrible depopulation, beginning with die Weltstädte, the World Cities, sucking up most able-bodied and sound men and women from rural areas, followed by a rapid decline in fertility due to urban individual values making life in general and children in particular into something doubtful and baseless, followed in turn by even more rapid urbanization until the final swift conquest and sundering of the entire civilization from Civ-style roaming barbarians brings the whole enterprise to an ignominious end. To be fair Spengler was no great thinker, and he was probably just extrapolating from the demographic decline of the early 20th century which was actually eventually solved. The glove does seem to fit though, doesn't it?
Anyway, the dangers of demographic decline is nothing new to the Motte, but I found it refreshing to see the consequence of the current trajectory put in plain text and graph by a state-financed publication rather than whispered on forums. There was a post here a while back linking to an unpleasant and depresing anti-children essay talking about how the fertility crisis is inevitable when women are allowed to choose freely (link: https://kryptogal.substack.com/p/the-fertility-crisis-is-inevitable). I think proponents of that particular case need to take a little bit more responsibility for where their ideas actually lead, rather than brush everything off with weak optimistic rambling about how a declining, decaying and rapidly aging population is nothing to worry about, and how the failure of the West and unending reign of Umbar and the Shadow might actually be a good thing, really, if you look at it from Sauron's perspective! I for one prefer the thought of all the Free People of the West continuing to perpetuate, sustain and rule themselves, and I will not apologize for this view.
Still, I for one am not despairing quite yet. The report itself is a good sign! In Sweden many seem to be realizing that there is indeed another crisis looming over us now besides climate change, and that it is little use making the planet more livable if there's no one left to live on it. Swedes are not nearly as dumb or naive as right-wing media would have many believe, and there is a strong hatred for immigrations here now coupled with a new appreciation for Swedish culture which bodes well for the future. Besides that, all the usual attempts (such as a strong welfare state, generous parent leave, et cetera) have already been tried here, which means we don't have to go through a bunch of ineffective non-solutions before we can move on to more innovative attempts. I for one think it would be interesting with a tax break for families coupled with a big tax hike for rich childless women. This would both create good incentives as well as clarify what society sees as the most valuable form of femininity. Many have posted much about this subject before, but I think it's ready for one more round. What does the Motte think about this?
(P.S. Later in January a follow-up report will be releaed with suggestions on how to rectify the problem, and if the Motte is interested I might make a post about that report too when it releases).
"Casual sex is a luxury. And that's been true for the entirety of human history. "
Indeed. The issue, however, is that progressive maxims generally proclaim inequality is bad and that luxury should be distributed more equally. Yet women are the supreme luxury for men, and their distribution remains highly unequal despite being obviously more important than wealth for male well-being.
I don't care very much if I have twenty thousand dollars more or less, but I'd exchange a significant chunk of my fortune for success with women, and an even bigger chunk to keep the love of my life that came and went last year. What man wouldn't make that trade? The simple truth is that failing to attract women (or a least a woman) makes the average dude's life much, much worse in a way that doesn't seem to be true for women in the corresponding situation. Between the choice of accepting this gigantic inequality as inevitable and denying it exists, it's no surprise many pick the latter option.
Speaking more broadly, I honestly think a big part of the current malaise of the West is caused by the relationship and sex recession. It's difficult to find cultural meaning when you can't get find a girl or at least get laid every now and again, and civilization decline seems to be what no pussy does to a mf.
The recession in turn is caused by many trends, but chief among them in my book are 1) women gaining ever more status and wealth and being generally hypergamous, 2) women using their voting power to tax men so that the state indirectly provides much of that which individual men used to give them, and 3) dating apps rigging the game to the disadvantage of most men.
This trend, coupled with increased tokophobia due to the internet making it easy to research pregnancy and childbirth, leads straight to a sudden and sharp demographic decline. This then runs the real risk of creating an unbreakable demographic death spiral in the entire West (since less children means downsizing of schools, a bigger burden for the coming generation, et cetera, which in turn makes children both more difficult and less enticing). Climate change might be annoying, but demography is the real threat looming over us. The Shadow of sexlessness has fallen over Middle-Earth, and it is hard to see how it might be vanquished. But it's still too early to give up hope, and maybe there'll come a change for the better soon.
Once again, I add here at the end, the foresight of Kipling makes fools of us all:
"On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
I've heard this sentiment before, and the central problem with it is that the time frame is ludicrous. Evolution can work quickly, but it needs at least a few generations in order to spread reproduction-conductive-genes throughout the population. Before our reproductive behaviour is done sorting itself out we'll already have a demographic collapse on our hands destabilizing enough to rock the foundations of every modern Western and Far Eastern state (not Africa, mind, which is rapidly making even the worst fears of overpopulation seem optimistic).
Now I can only speak for myself, but I quite like those states – I think they're the best, actually, and it'd be a shame to see them go.
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