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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   38245 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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But wait you say! There's too many people on the planet anyway! So what if we shrink our population for a couple generations anyway? Just accepting this argument on its face for now (I don't actually), you're not actually solving the issue, merely delaying it and hoping in a couple of generations it will resolve itself. Why would this trend reverse? The only way this trend "reverses" is that the sub-populations with extremely high fertility rates (Amish, ultra-orthodox Jews, hyper-tradCaths) basically take over the population (and somehow themselves don't get subjected to the same forces of low fertility). Maybe you're an anti-natalist, a nihilist and you don't really care what the future holds for humanity assuming there is even a future. But you must at least understand that some people might actually care.

This argument misses the point that the only way for a population to compete with those orthodox religious groups is to emulate those groups in the ways that are relevant to boosting birth rates. But those religious groups rely on fear, shame, and the threat of violence to enforce their restrictive rules, and this is unacceptable in a liberal society. The best a liberal ideologue can hope for is that the future is filled with people who reproduce a lot because that is what they truly desire, and not because they are forced to by their religious beliefs, but this hope is naive.

But shrinking population means a shrinking economy, and the debt will only ever grow. Young people will be saddled with an increasingly unpayable debt given to them by the previous generations. Not having children is basically a free rider problem. You're expecting someone else's kid to care for you and pay of the national debt in the future. Suppose if no one chose to have kids anymore, then who would be left to actually do anything? We'd just be a dystopia of elderly people, Children of Men style. Humanity doomed to die off.

The solution to the debt problem is for the government to not spend in a way that accrues debt. You can internalize the externality by making people either have to save money to fund their retirement, or have kids to provide for them in old age. If everyone stops having kids, there is probably a good reason for that, and having a society full of only elderly people is not their biggest problem.

On to the things that are harder to quantify or definitely prove - I think the drop in fertility rate and the rise of childless and single child families is not social healthy, and is generally bring misery. The direction causality between between the atomisation of society and low fertility rates is uncertain, it's probably a feedback loop with many other related factors at play. We are facing a crisis of meaning and community in the West, and I think this has been driven in large part by the destruction of the family. Young adults may be happy to leave a hedonistic life free of familial responsibility in their youth, but when the reach their 40s and 50s, loneliness will and has hit them hard. It's incredibly short sighted and yes, based on instant gratification. They're the farmer who has eaten their seed corn and has nothing to harvest for the future.

Then wouldn't the solution to this be to spread the message that not having kids causes loneliness later in life. For what its worth, I think people already realize this, that some people are short sighted and end up regretting it is not a good reason to coerce those who do this but don't end up regretting it, its hard to know if a decision will be regretted, and some people like to take the risk. Also, the regret could be mistaken, an elderly person who chose to have few or no kids might believe it would have been better if they had had more, but only because they have changed as a person or do not remember exactly why they made the decision that they did.

It's hard for me to take your suggestion that childlessness is just the result of innate preferences when this is an incredibly recent phenomenon, it hasn't been this way for the entirety of human history up into this point. It also make no sense evolutionarily that our innate biological preferences is to not have children (some people are argued that we are wired to have sex, not raise children, but this still makes little sense to me, because we are a K reproductive strategy species, not an r).

There has been at least one other society in history that has had the same trends, which is roman society. The reason this is a recent phenomenon is because in the past, religious and cultural pressure prevented people from deciding for themselves whether they want sex to bring about babies for them.

Additionally, we live in an age of unprecedented information, ideology and propaganda. I don't believe or one second that say, feminist ideology hasn't had an impact on fertility rates.

Of course it has, but I don't see the problem, if people were convinced by feminist ideology, there is probably a good reason they were.

This argument misses the point that the only way for a population to compete with those orthodox religious groups is to emulate those groups in the ways that are relevant to boosting birth rates.

They don't have to emulate their hyper fertility rates. They simply just needs to main a fertility rate above the replacement rate. In your whole response you also completely ignore the major point that you actually need above a fertility rate above 2.1 for humanity to survive. I'm sure eventually the human population will eventually shrink to a point where civilisation as we know it collapses, and they rise again, but I don't exactly see that as a positive. Or we can hope the robots bail us out, but that might actually cause the extinction of humans one way or another.

The solution to the debt problem is for the government to not spend in a way that accrues debt.

The debt already exists! It was accrued by the earlier, now increasingly childless generations! The national debt of the US is currently $30 trillion. Who is expected to pay off that debt exactly? An increasingly smaller cohort of children, presumably. And god forbid when the Social Security system collapses because less and less people are paying into it while the growing elderly withdraws. And this still doesn't acknowledge the fact that you still need young workers in your society to do stuff like literally, physically. It doesn't matter if you're a retiree with a large amount of savings. If you're like South Korea, you simply won't have enough labour when one young worker has to do enough labour to support the needs of 5 elderly people and themselves. It's unsustainable. In 50 years or so, a lot of old people are going to be fucked. The state based social services will collapse if nothing changes. The only elderly people who will get support will be those who have grandkids who will personally and direct support them.

If everyone stops having kids, there is probably a good reason for that, and having a society full of only elderly people is not their biggest problem.

It's already happening! South Korea's population is going shrink by more than half in a single generation! Is that not concerning to you?

Then wouldn't the solution to this be to spread the message that not having kids causes loneliness later in life.

Yes, please! Except how do you actually propose to implement this solution? Because right now, people, particularly young women are told the exact opposite. What do you think the feminist messaging is, exactly? That their career is way more important than their family. Family is only something to worry about when after you've built your career, it's low priority if it's something to care about at all. The message should be that having a family is fulfilling and full of meaning! Now, if only there was some way to package this messaging in a system of beliefs that is easily absorbed by people... Maybe there is actually some truth in religious traditions and traditional ways of living more generally.

You know, the part of the issue is that there is the assumption, which is largely present in your own comments, that having family is a lesser path, that it's not something worth of admiration or celebration and it's even low status. At best, it's completely value neutral. People can just have a family if they want to I guess, whatever. No, I say. Having a family is a moral and social good. It is literally is the foundation for humanity and society and what makes life worth living. The alternative is hedonistic nihilism which is what I think we're heading towards. Being a mother or (gasp!) housewife is seen as a lesser, oppressive choice than becoming a 9-5 desk slave.

There has been at least one other society in history that has had the same trends, which is late roman society. The reason this is a recent phenomenon is because in the past, religious and cultural pressure prevented people from deciding for themselves whether they want sex to bring about babies for them.

Great, the one example that you managed to list was a society that was just about to collapse. Not exactly a confidence booster.

Also, I hate to do this, but unironically 'we live in a society'. Humans are social creatures by nature. There is no, and never will be some hyper libertine rationalist utopia where people are free from any and all cultural pressures. Society is made up of social institutions, which will always exert social pressures. 'Social pressures' is such a negative way of framing this. It is just as true that people find meaning, purpose and improvement in their social groups and community, which necessarily includes conformity and pressure to conform to that community in order to be part of it. There is social pressure for people to receive an education, is this a bad or oppressive thing? The issue is that 'social pressures' need to be oriented in such a way to produce good, moral and meaningful outcomes.

Of course it has, but I don't see the problem, if people were convinced by feminist ideology, there is probably a good reason they were.

This is a terrible argument. "I don't see the problem, if people were convinced by Fascist ideology, there is probably a good reason they were."

You also bring in a terrible double standard. People being convinced by religion is bad and oppressive, but people being convinced by feminist ideology is good and organic.

I'll leave you with a final question - if our current social paradigm eventually results in the extinction of humanity or at the very least a collapse of civilisation because of the lack of fertility, are you content to let things remain the way they are? Would you be okay with some limits or 'social pressure' on people if it means stopping the collapse?

Why did this feminist ideology become so pervasive in the first place? I think its because many people see pregnancy, childbirth, and caring for infants as burdensome and unpleasant, while having a career makes you financially independent and wealthier.

You are right about there being a pressure to conform, but its better that people are tolerant of different choices such as becoming a mother early or not doing so, rather than shaming one or the other.

The problem with religious pressure as opposed to secular pressure to conform and not disappoint is that the former is more coercive. Religion prevents certain patterns of behavior by calling them evil and scaring people with eternal consequences in hell for engaging in them. This results in people breaking the norm to be treated with hostility and disgust, that is if they get past the fear of divine punishment in the first place.

Edit: I also fail to see why you think that feminist propaganda is being pushed upon young females and crowding out pronatal messages not only in the west, but also in places like greece, china, and thailand which all have well below replacement birth rates.

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