coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
I think this is pretty nitpicky. In America, everyone pursues status according to financial success unless they belong to a cult or a university. It can be called any term you like. Your point above that the Haredi would compete over wealth upon entering the workforce doesn’t really make sense, as (1) Haredi in the workforce have lower status than the Rabbis and (2) such a competition wouldn’t harm TFR any more than the already-fierce status competition over learning the most Torah. It would need to be argued that participation in the workforce for the Haredi would somehow harm the status competition around having large families.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
Right but today we just throw our mentally ill and drug-addicted onto the populous streets to haunt the low-wage workers who take public transportation. Intermittently they spend an expensive night in jail or take an expensive ambulance ride to an expensive hospital. Sometimes they kill each other or give each other AIDs or just die. It’s very costly as is. I imagine the religious extremist would just confine them somewhere for their own good, which results in a fraction of the social and economic costs and is also morally superior.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
Capitalism enforces a zero-sum status competition, regardless of whether it is positive sum in its economic consequences or not; actors compete over obtaining more wealth than their peers and a greater position than their peers. As you said, “enjoy more wealth, a de facto higher status”, that’s a relative position which is zero-sum; having more wealth and prestige = more status = better marital outcomes.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
This wouldn’t be unusual for Europe or America before the 20th century, though. Problematic people were normally shunned from the community. This was done either through shunning them from polite society (simply never invited anywhere) or literally kicking them out of the town. Christians would have a certain place where the lifelong penitents would stay during mass, in some eras. Also, don’t we shun them now? We just put our mentally ill on the street. Why is this an argument against copying the Haredi TFR scheme, and more precisely, why would you believe this criticism weighs against civilizational catastrophe? When nations face civilizational catastrophe from war, they postpone freedom and force men to be warriors and then force them at gunpoint to march to certain death in the most degraded condition. Surely we can expend 0.01% of the stress and just orient culture toward pronatality.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
Haredi culture already has a zero-sum, winner-takes-all status competition reminiscent of capitalism in the form of obtaining Rabbinical positions, something that commends a man more status than being even a billionaire. That’s part of the reason the older guys still continue to study. Yet even with this ruthless competition over status, the TFR remains high, because of the aforenoted confluence of pro-fertile cultural attributes. The Haredi man with a lot of money has worse marital odds than a poor Haredi man at a good rabbinical school. But both are getting married and both are having children.
Get a job, get married, have lots of babies to solve your own TFR rate but don't worry too much about everyone else's TFR.
If everyone focused on this alone then it would cement the ruin of the entire civilization. Though I agree that’s the best advise for normal people, you actually do need people obsessing over TFR because our elites are lowkey retarded and senseless.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
The set is unrelated to 10 hours a day of studying. That is outside the set and something which they just happen to also do. When people possess the true set of pro-fertility cultural properties, like the Mennonites who do back-breaking labor in South America, or 1930s Germany which had enormous TFR gains due to cultural policy, then they also have more children, without having to study for 10 hours a day. And when Haredi stop studying or stop studying early, they continue having high TFR.
Unfortunately, the only two good proofs of the necessity of pro-fertility cultural elements are religious Jews and the Nazis. This makes it very difficult to persuade normal people to follow your line of argument, because it makes you sound like a genuinely insane person. But consider the Nazis saw a 40% gain of TFR and the shift was highest in urban areas, not rural areas.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2768366
Preliminary vital statistics for 1934 show that in the Western world there was a general arrest in the decline of the birth-rate which had been going on for a decade or more. In Hungary the birth-rate decreased from 1933 to 1934 less than half as much as it did a year earlier, and in Norway only one-fifth as much. In Poland the rate of 26.5 per 1,000 in 1934 represented no change from 1933, in contrast to a decline of 2.2 from 1932 to 1933. In Great Britain the birth-rate in 1934 is estimated provisionally at I4.8, slightly above the 1933 rate of 14-4, which in turn was well below that of I5.3 in 1932. In the United States the rise from 16.4 in 1933 to 17.1 in 1934 almost brought the birth-rate back to the 1932 figure of I7-3.? These changes are dwarfed, however, by Germany's experience. There the birth-rate was 15.1 in 1932, I4.7 in 1933, and 18.0 in 1934.
According to Nazi leaders, the suppression of abortion, the restrictions on giving birth-control information, and the offering of the various economic inducements have had less effect together on the birth-rate than the psychical revolution which has followed the Nazi rise to political power. They say that formerly the individual was considered the important unit, so it was natural that each person should think he should control his own body and decide the question of parenthood from his own point of view. Under Nazi leadership, however, the predominant importance of the state has been empha-sized. As a result it is claimed that a large proportion of the population already has come to feel that the body belongs only in part to the individual, and that the need of the state for children is the first factor to consider in deciding on the proper size of family.
The Nazis say that under the individualistic point of view a pregnant woman was treated with a certain amount of derision and scorn; she was foolish to undergo pregnancy; she and her husband would be more sensible to buy an auto or spend money on themselves in other ways rather than to incur the expenses connected with raising a family. This general attitude has been changed, the leaders claim, so that now child-bearing is considered holy and a pregnant woman is shown the utmost consideration as one unselfishly doing her part for the good of the state. Children are extolled as worth far more than material comforts. Even in the schools the youth are being incul- cated with these beliefs. Most important of all the psychical changes, according to the Nazis, has been the reviving of self-respect among the German people, and of their faith in the future of Germany. They claim that both feelings were dying out under the previous regime, and that people were becoming increasingly unwilling to raise children in such an atmosphere. With the change in policy under the present government Germany has again taken her place as an equal among neighboring nations and has indicated that she will maintain it. This has led to an emotional rebirth of the German people, for the future now appears rosy to them where before it was black. They feel again that theirs is a nation with a mission-one in which it is worth while to raise a family.
In the larger cities the birth-rate of I933 was above that of I932 for the first time in the third quarter, and the differential has steadily become larger up to the last quarter of I934. These turning-points in the birth-rate correspond to changes in the rate of uninterrupted conceptions nine months earlier, for the nation in the quarter following Hitler's accession to power and for the larger cities in the quarter preceding
the twelve states with the higher proportion of Catholics had an increase in birth-rate of 17.3 per cent compared with 21.1 per cent in the other thirteen states. [subtly important stat here; Catholics were less likely to be on board with Nazism, and so if the cultural elements of Nazism increases TFR, then we should expect that Catholics would not see greater gains; they are in a slightly different cultural ecosystem]
On the whole, therefore, it may be said that the forces tending to raise the birth-rate had least effect on Catholics and agricultural people-those least affected in previous years by the forces tending to lower the birth-rate [another subtly important stat. The agricultural were far less likely to be in an area where Nazi propaganda was present and powerful]
Berlin is well in the lead with a I934 birth-rate 48 per cent above that of I933, while at the other extreme Beuthen (in Silesia, very near the Polish border) shows an increase of only I2 percent
The birth rate continued to rise until the advent of war. Now consider that the Nazis, despite loving propaganda, probably had little idea how to create really good pro-motherhood culture, or that most of the larger effects would be delayed to when the indoctrinated come to age. Even their shoddy attempt at increasing TFR through culture worked, and they only got to see the smallest prelude of the TFR gains before extenuating circumstances nullified our chance to measure the gains.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
It probably does give them +10 points in allegiance and +20 in conformity, but you have very allegiant evangelicals all over America who do not have such TFR because they don’t have the pro-fertile cultural requirements
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
I’m so not persuaded on this. Of course you can’t replicate the Haredi one-to-one, nor would this be desirable. But you can replicate the high TFR aspects of their culture. The young men might spend 8-16 hrs per day studying the Torah, and then they spend probably 90 minutes of their time doing rituals. In exchange for this strenuous labor, they receive welfare benefits which still amount to a low income lifestyle. We can totally imagine a Haredi culture where, instead of spending 8 hours learning all the laws about separately eating milk and meat, they spend 8 hours at an Amazon Warehouse. When they are done working, they still exist in a pro-fertile culture where status is judged by number of children &tc. And there are Haredi who work, they are big in Amazon fulfillment and places like B&H cameras. There working Haredi still have a high TFR. And they had a high TFR when they worked at Agriprocessors. So, while they do have a lot of schemes that give them benefits, those benefits are less than the money they would earn were they working for the same amount of time that they study.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
I find Anglican Chant underrated. It descends from traditional European liturgical chant, the Gregorian chant, but adds harmony and new melodies. The text used is often an old rendering of the psalms in 17th century English or earlier. It is the music of America’s beginnings: not only was the first song ever sung in America from an Anglican psalter (a song of thanksgiving, which you could still sing today if you so desired), but more than half of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence were Anglican and three of the first five presidents.
Sometimes the chants sound like they would fit well in a supernatural and dramatic RPG like Bloodborne, if you were to slow them and add reverb some effects. (Some imagination required). They can be delightfully pitiful, and few music settings can capture this spirit well, certainly no settings still in use today outside of well-endowed Cathedrals.
Turn thee, O Lᴏʀᴅ, and deliver my soul;
O save me, for thy mercy’s sake.
For in death no man remembereth thee;
and who will give thee thanks in the pit?
Other settings are glorious and joyful, of course:
He hath made the round world so sure,
that it cannot be moved.
Ever since the world began, hath thy seat been prepared:
thou art from everlasting.
The floods are risen, O Lᴏʀᴅ, the floods have lift up their voice;
the floods lift up their waves.
The waves of the sea are mighty, and rage horribly;
but yet the Lᴏʀᴅ who dwelleth on high is mightier.
My favorite is from the Queen’s funeral, I think.
Whither shall I go then from thy Spirit? • or whither shall I go then from thy presence? • If I climb up into heaven, thou art there; • if I go down to hell, thou art there also. • If I take the wings of the morning, • and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea; • Even there also shall thy hand lead me, • and thy right hand shall hold me. • If I say, Peradventure the darkness shall cover me; • then shall my night be turned to day. • Yea, the darkness is no darkness with thee, but the night is as clear as the day; • the darkness and light to thee are both alike. • For my reins are thine
Now a lot of the musical settings are bad, sadly, but when they’re good they’re really good. And it’s an acquired taste, as they insist on fitting each line of variable size into the same steady melody.
The psalms are interesting because they’re so… self-absorbed. Almost narcissistic. “For I have heard the blasphemy of the multitude, and fear is on every side; while they conspire together against me, and take their counsel to take away my life.” So dramatic! It’s like the most dramatic teenager telling you about drama in their school (they all hate me… they want me dead…). The psalms were always designed to be communally-sung, even if ascribed to David, so this is interesting to dwell on — songs that are communal while conveying so much individualistic conceit. But I guess this isn’t unusual in popular music, where people rap along to gangster rap about opps and triumphing against them.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
The first Hasidic settlement is more like a town than a city, in contrast to urban Jewry at the time, unless I am mistaken: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medzhybizh
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
Maybe not for Haredim but there are others ways to create adherence and allegiance if you were going to copy Haredi TFR values.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
The so-called National-Religious having a consistent TFR of 4 actually proves a lot.
What is even going on there in 2025? The political board has been unusable and IMO totally botted since maybe 2018
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