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Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 20, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I'm still grappling with this body of issues myself. I think declining fertility, increasing male sexlessness, worsening gender relations are all serious issues that the mainstream is just burying their head in the sand in the face of. And it seems to affect just about all countries above a certain affluence threshold.

I suppose the steelman of the idea you are talking about is that;

Pro fertility memes can outbreed pro fertility genes. In a very low resolution view, the sex-negative Christian right might outbreed sex-positive left, regardless of how much drive you have to have sex, you still need to have and raise children.

Human societies compete on genes and memes (or inversely genes and memes are both competing evolutionarily and sometimes they butt heads). It doesn't matter if your tribe has the strongest warrior genetics if the other tribe invents gunpowder before you.

What ultimately scares me is that for a variety of reasons, I don't think a pro fertility society can be returned to (sans massive upheaval). The sex positive meme can just capture the minds of your children. It's encoded in almost literally all of pop culture.

A pro fertility society is easy in theory. Just ban abortion, contraception, LBGT, and pornography. Not going to happen without a totaliatarian regime with the current technology level, but if that's what would be required then it's tautological that the low fetility in modernity peoples will only survive in such a regime.

Not going to happen without a totaliatarian regime with the current technology level

The bigger problem is cultural.

illiberal is not synonymous with totalitarian. Many societies maintained and maintain bans and taboos against all of those things without totalitarianism. For example: I think it would be very bad for the cause if you simply removed any ability to sue for anti-LGBT discrimination. I think the lack of that protection alone disincentivizes a lot of activism in less progressive countries.

The issue is whether Western societies are willing to tolerate such actions.

I don’t really think there are pro-fertility genes except for “sexual desire” and “potency”. Sex negative is in fact more culturally fertile because such people tie sex to family formation through propaganda. So in this sense, yes, the conservative memeplex can outbreed the progressive one. But once they have children they lose some large percentage to the progressive memeplex, and conservatives don’t produce enough children to cancel this effect (unlike the Amish).

I agree on sex positive mind virus point.