domain:questioner.substack.com
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
3hr ago
Regardless of whether or not it's unkind to say the truth, it isn't up for debate that there are massive differences on average between the kind of child OP could have (if not infertile) and the kind up for adoption.
Shrike
3hr ago
That said, I suspect this is mainly due to the much larger population of non-practicing Catholics?
Yes, I think this is right. I also think there are a lot of people in the Catholic church who are very left-wing (...even on positions like abortion) and who want to reform the church from within.
Whereas as you say evangelicals who are dissatisfied with, say, the evangelical teachings on abortion just leave.
That said I would not be surprised if this changes - if younger people who leave Catholicism increasingly drop the label entirely, rather than continue to call themselves Catholic and just not do anything, then Catholicism will become more meaningful as a signal.
I think this is likely. My guess is that in the US over the next 40 - 50 years, Catholic numbers drop considerably (or if they hold steady, it's due to immigration) but the remnants are more dedicated and more "conservative" as far as such things go.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
3hr ago
In that case, people who would have been sysadmins are either paid to become brick layers or are forced to do it because that's the only job left.
There's a reason you rarely see Asian-Americans working low end jobs in the US, while those positions are filled back in their native countries. A society of Einsteins will have a need for janitors, until they automate the solution away. It is still better to be such a society with such a population.
WhiningCoil
3hr ago
Side note, my highest aspiration these days is to earn enough unrealized capital gains to retire, and live off the 0% tax rate on the first $100,000-ish I realize a year. Even after that it's only 15% up to $500,000. Fuck paying into this system that hates me and my family.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3hr ago
But the population of 19th century Europe was booming, not shrinking during that time period. Europe was growing and filling whole continents with Europeans. A European country might be individually unstable but European civilization as a whole was not in danger, it was the danger. The TLDR of history from 1000-1918 is basically 'Europe gets stronger and stronger and wrecks everyone else'. European empires expanded even after WW1, finally dealing the death blow to the Ottoman Empire.
Today Europe is shrinking rather than growing. Individual countries may be 'stable' under the EU system. Elect social democrat, get excited for next social democrat! But the system as a whole cannot handle change precisely because of its stability. A united, 'stable', rich Europe of some 450 million apparently cannot deal with a poor Russia of 140 million without America. Europe is not grappling with new technologies in space or AI, they're not leading the frontier anymore, they're in a passive situation dealing with the rise of China, with refugee crises. That's the kind of stability that's unstable.
Strength in a changing universe (in a universe that one's very presence is changing) requires constant change that's easily conflated with instability. Surface-level stability can just be inflexibility that inevitably leads to catastrophe and disaster.
MayorofOysterville
3hr ago
Look a single dude straight in the eye and say "Yeah she's banged 6-12 dudes prior to you, but I'm sure that she won't ever be thinking about any of them or comparing your performance and YOU'RE the one she's going to stick with" with a straight face.
Ok but this is entirely normal in Western culture and has been since like the 70s so about 50 years now. And it's not just her that's expected to have 6-12 previous partners it's you as well. If you don't well that's probably part of it but the vast majority of men in modern Western society would not be at all phased by a body count of 6 and thinking they would be shows you as an extreme outlier. I realize modern Western culture is also an extreme outlier but nevertheless that's the culture you live in.
Now it's actually not that hard to marry a virgin in the US you just need to sincerely convert to one of the dozens of conservative religious denominations that enforce this many of which have more women than men. The other way is to ingratiate yourself into a more conservative nonwestern culture and try for marriage there. But acting like a body count of 6 is some damning thing when that is what is culturally expected of modern secular women is not going to get you very far. Modern secular women and men are expected to have several previous relationships and flings from high school and college that's the cultural expected norm. It's totally fair to not like that but understand you are like a Saudi woman searching for a sensitive feminist hipster plenty of those exist but you are going to have to go out of your cultural comfort zone to find them.
MayorofOysterville
3hr ago
Serious question. Would ever consider an arranged marriage in India or dating a Filipina overseas, in order to find a match?
MayorofOysterville
3hr ago
I appreciate this post. Too many people view the past as something like Saudi Arabia and don't realize how much freedom and independence women had in Northern Europe historically or how late the marriage ages were there. Settling down in your 30s was just what sensible middle class people did to have a good life. Just like going to university or putting money into a 401k today. At least in Northern Europe it wasn't girls getting married at 15 to much older men.
cjet79
3hr ago
Depends on the restaurant. Chick-fil-A feels the opposite. There are also some local Burger joints that seem to be all English as a first language teenagers, but naming them would dox me.
ThisIsSin
Cainanites and Abelists
4hr ago
'Elites' are more likely to be punished for imaginary crimes (like fucking 16 and 17-year-olds) than real ones.
To a point, they have qualified/sovereign immunity from prosecution when they commit the real crimes, that's why you have to get them hard on the public morals stuff.
MayorofOysterville
4hr ago
It's not a problem that can be fixed with self improvement. But it's a pretty easy problem to solve, for any non-obese, non-insane, white guy 45 and under, just outsource. Open Filipina Cupid.com or go study some bullshit continuing education course in Manila and you'll have dozens of eligible pretty slim women falling over you. Yes there will be pure gold diggers and green card hunters but also don't discount the natural attraction being wealthy and high status induces is women.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4hr ago
If a game gets worse when you play the meta then it's just a shallow, badly designed game.
Absolutely right but getting to be a doctor, academic, high-ranking officer, lawyer isn't a game. It's not designed for fun. Becoming a doctor is one of the least fun things I can think of.
Does Korean hyper-intensive education of young people really pay off? Well it's a highly developed advanced manufacturing powerhouse. But we can't be sure that the extra stress and strain of intensive meritocracy is helpful. 90% of their edge could be from doing good industrial policy, not wrecking their economy, having a population of high-IQ Koreans... Perhaps Korea would do better with a less stratified economy, more emphasis on zero-to-one innovation, more start-ups and entrepreneurship rather than chaebols eating everything.
Perhaps shredding the nerves of young people with high-intensity tests and competition (I've seen this happen with some Chinese kids) is just too much meritocracy, I think that's 2rafa's main point.
I didn't even mention the most befuddling and depressing stat:
When asked about having children, 51% of young adults who are not parents say they would like to have children one day. Three-in-ten say they’re not sure, and 18% say they don’t want to have children.
While 57% of young men say they want children one day, a smaller share of young women (45%) say the same.
21% of childless women say the DON'T want kids, compared to 15% of childless men.
Men by and large want kids.
And the ones they'd have to do it with are by and large NOT seeking kids.
"Oh but 12% isn't that big a difference."
Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of men that represents.
Women are passing on men who would date and marry them. It is not the reverse.
The ONLY way this gets solved is convincing more women to settle and have kids.
Men can't improve their way out of a shortage of women who want kids.
MayorofOysterville
4hr ago
Not Western Buddhism as practiced in America no it isn't. Scripture will only get you so far, Paul discourages marriage in his letters yet to say American Christianity is against marriage and procreation would be foolish. Not all Christian denominations were against Gay marriage in the culture war either but the overwhelming perspective of secularish young people is that Christianity has a lot of nonsensical rules about sex and Buddhism doesn't. I don't think Buddhism is going to hugely boom up. But it's definitely an advantage as you get a lot less pushback being a Buddhist in certain circles than a Christian and it's easier to syncretize with modern progressive values.
faceh
4hr ago
See it sounds to me like you are trying to treat men and women as the exact same and getting frustrated that they aren't.
I have a generalized model for Western Women:
They have a set of three roles they want to be 'seen' fulfilling:
High-powered career woman (Girlboss).
Freespirited, cultured, 'independent' woman. That is, one who travels everywhere, has a fun and carefree life, and flits from party to party. Thirst traps abound here.
Devoted and effective mother.
I'm actually frustrated that they AREN'T acting more different than men, and eschewing the one role that men can't actually fill.
Women are not and shouldn't be as hardcore about discipline and working out etc. as a man. That's ok.
Yes, indeed, all a woman has to do to be considered 'fit' is 'not be obese.' Just don't be obviously and grotesquely fat.
AND YET, they're still the more obese gender.
I don't know what to tell you man, they have an overall lower bar, and many of them don't even try to clear it.
MayorofOysterville
4hr ago
Yes Evangelical churches are growing in a large part because they are scooping up converts from the collapsing mainline denominations. Religion as whole in the US is still declining, but the Evangelicals do present an interesting data point as the US mirrors the secularization of Europe Evangelicals. It's possible that the Evangelicals stop the tide or even reverse it. My guess is they'll hold steady they have a high fertility rate but a high defection rate of the youth and secular culture has a strong pull. They are also massively less influential than they were in the 80s and 00s and they'd have to work pretty hard to get that power back.
faceh
4hr ago
Why would they continue to work on 'productive' labor when there is no actual purpose to doing so?
I mean that literally, why would they do more than the bare minimum, enough to keep their electricity and internet on?
Why would they do any job that carries any amount of risk or requires excess hours of their time?
And, of course, why wouldn't they just vote for the most radical political candidates in the meantime?
Its prevalent enough in Japan already that they have a term for it: Herbivore men..
Consider that there are two types of 'fuck you' money.
Being filthy rich so that you can afford to lose a bunch of it.
And being so dirt poor that you have nothing to lose and thus don't care about losing.
The only real suckers in this scenario are the guys stuck in the middle class doing most of the productive work and paying taxes whilst receiving very few benefits back.
MayorofOysterville
4hr ago
Yes you aren't now, but if current trends hold (always a big if) TradCaths are going to be so wildy out of step with society morality and socially that I expect the gap to widen. In 200 years I don't see the West being more sexually conservative given that we've been liberalizing since the enlightenment. There's a lot of stuff grandfathered in but when todays Zoomers are grandparents I think it will be a lot harder for practicing Catholics to mesh into society.
FtSoA
4hr ago
If Russia’s goal has been to take the secessionist regions, as was their initial claim, the lack of further territorial advances would be expected.
That was very much NOT their initial claim and ignores that whole "drive to take Kiev" campaign debacle.
It's steelclowning to retrocon that "Russia didn't even want to take the whole country in a rapid victory anyway so this is all fine actually."
Russia, even if they're winning and on track to achieve more limited goals, has not been easily winning. If Russia had been consistently inflicting significantly disproportionate losses on Ukraine this whole time the war would have already ended.
Russian military performance has been embarrassing. Their economic performance has not.
Gaashk
4hr ago
To be clear, neither my mother, nor I, nor the friends I can think of married a man who had, from the start, what you would call a career, or was making that kind of money. My mom's mother gave them money for a down payment, because my dad was never going to have it himself.
Ultimately, I think it's more important to signal potential love and commitment, but that's more subject to specific circumstances, and making more money is also nice for other reasons, so it's a safe thing to focus on.
No, "roommates" in this sense is people who share the same house but have their own rooms.
In the old days, people who only needed a single room could instead live in a single room occupancy (e.g. Judy's apartment in Zootopia), but ever since we decided to make those illegal, anyone who cannot afford a studio has no choice but to move in together and rent individual rooms in a house or apartment, with all the attendant friction and problems.
(This is one big reason I still live with my mom; if I have to have a roommate anyway, who better than my mother who loves me? What's the point of moving out just to become roommates with a stranger?)
This is just your insecurity talking.
Yeah sure. And if you have a job applicant whose resume shows 12 different jobs in the past 5 years, none of which lasted more than 3 months, they're 'insecure' if they pass you over for an applicant with a more stable history, right?
(hint: it shows trouble actually committing, i.e. a red flag).
Nobody is obligated to be 'secure' about promiscuity, that's laughable to even suggest. Its about the one thing we are genetically wired to BE insecure about.
Which is to say, your comment reads like satire.
but 6-12 is perfectly normal in this day and age.
And it was less normal in the past.
Granddad had a 64% chance of marrying a woman with only 1 or fewer sexual partners.
Guys now have a 27% chance, at best.
Strangely, more people got married back in granddad's day.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4hr ago
I'm thinking in terms of various camps, fake "research opportunities" to pretend your kid is doing science and shit, expensive non credit non graded college summer programs that pretend to be classes at a school, travel programs abroad that masquerade as charity work programs with no deliverables to help you write a college essay. That's more the kind of stuff gunner kids do in high school rather than get a job.
I don't think the time when Asian kids are made to learn violin overlaps much, if at all, with the time kids get summer jobs in high school. If you haven't learned the violin by 12, you probably aren't going to learn it very well if at all.
And for that matter, while I agree that music is a good thing to do with one's time, I genuinely think having a job is a better more enriching experience. I think a warehouse job will teach a kid more than a summer biology program at Brown will.
rae
4hr ago
Look a single dude straight in the eye and say "Yeah she's banged 6-12 dudes prior to you, but I'm sure that she won't ever be thinking about any of them or comparing your performance and YOU'RE the one she's going to stick with" with a straight face.
This is just your insecurity talking. You're afraid that you might be worse off in some way than a previous partner, and thinking of sex like it's a "performance" instead of viewing it as a mutual exploration of intimacy, pleasure, and most importantly, as a way to bond with your partner.
Also 6-12 partners, those are rookie numbers. Like I could understand being weirded out by your partner having over 50 hook-ups, but 6-12 is perfectly normal in this day and age.
I've wondered about this. I'm not sure if I'll live long enough to see the whole effects. Even post 1965 homosexuality only became fully normalized like 15 years ago.
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