"The numbers speak for themselves. By the time 2005 rolled around, Mongolaia's fertility rate crashed to an all-time Mongolian low of 1.95 in 2005, while the world average hovered around 2.3.
But since then — largely thanks to the government upping its incentives in 2006 — the rate has started to rise. Mongolia's National statistics office reported an overall fertility rate of 2.69 children per woman in 2009. (World average for the period 2005 to 2010 is 2.5.)"
I feel looking for culturally based just-so stories even in their simplicity are too much to explain child less adulthood. It's a worldwide phenomenon, so blaming a correlation--- religiosity as membership declines at the same time -- hmmm) Having heard Korean women (in Tasmania) talk about their incel-chad man-o-sphere it's no wonder they do not feel valued. This is affecting choice ( a mismatch between choosers and aplicants) . If it is a choice which depends in part on a choice (of partner) maybe men need to lift their game rather than double down to dress as some sort of non-cross dressing tradcore drag act.
The worldwide phenomenon is itself part of a trend. Thousands of years ago humanity stumbled into a sort of agrarian cultural pit, where more children meant more agricultural output, but everyone was tied to the land and couldn't abandon oppressive local overlords. Innovation languished, poverty and inequality were the norm, and it wasn't until the advances from more mercantile areas like Greece that a different system gradually emerged. Today those societies that are lagging show high religiosity, poverty, high fertility, and other residuals of the agrarian cultural pit. Unfortunately it's the lagging societies and individuals that are evolutionarily more viable, as they are the ones who contribute overwelmingly to the future gene pool. The rest of us figured out that there's more to life than being baby machines, so Mother Nature is just shrugging and bestowing her love on those who are too backward to figure things like that out. Someday perhaps humanity as a whole will return to a blissful unreflective slumber, and Mother will coninue to smile.
① ostensibly a third of the population in any society is not at the height of their productivity let alone reproductivity, that is at least a third is either: growing up, growing old, ill, less able physically or mentally, or, dedicates themselves to non-productive activities (religious practices, elitist practices, shamanic practices, artistic practices) which, also ostensibly do the work of coding rituals to lubricate our conflicts into effervescent creative noyaux and not war. But if there are no children to hand these practices on to.... what is the point of them. ② Contra to the religious/fertility correlations: if the height of a medieval European career was an ostensibly celibate monk as pope, and this is an example of contra conspicuous display (I am so fit and successful I do not need to reproduce, look I'll swish my peacock frock coat and tale) it could only appear as an option (a runaway option) if a lot of women are doing the heavy lifting (but no medals for you who gracefully demur). I'd argue a decline in fertility here is the delayed result of a missmatch in signalling fitness (I am so fit I do not need to reproduce and just have a career). Just to be clear this is also a just-so story created for illustrative purposes, only, one in which the male careerist never mentions their family in powerful society, in honour or follwoing the model of priests or public servants who work for the crown (most bureaucracies in Europe start with clerics/clerks i.e those who can read and write (Latin). in which case the bugabear is religious practices and their shadowplay out of step with fitness realities.
I totally support blaming the French. It is usually a good first guess, and often the second as well. Third is usually to blame a German. It seems like most of the really bad ideas that caught on since the 1700’s have come from one of those two regions.
On the cultural side, one could probably do a fair bit of moving towards larger families by making good films and television featuring people with bigger families being happy instead of focusing on the misery of too many kids or siblings. That’s a big ask because once propaganda is a goal quality suffers, but it does occur to me that in many movies growing up having a big family was a source of strife not happiness. You’d want people to see the bigger family and say “I want that.”
Unfortunately I'd have to say sometime around the 20th century the Anglosphere began to monopolize the market for bad ideas. Media which pathologizes family dynamics and formation is really just another part of the trend.
In a sense, it may be hard to blame Hollywood & Pals for that, since conservatives have been having more kids than leftists for a while, and if you're on the left like everybody in American media has been for as long as I've been aware of it, then inevitably you notice high conservative fertility with a feeling of suspicion and that starts to come through in your productions.
But frankly almost everything that comes out of the mainstream media to me now has the flavor of propoganda, and yes, quality has suffered. As a society I have no idea what America is supposed to do, but for individuals the schlocky quality of 21st century media makes it pretty easy to just tune it out completely, and find entertainment from a more civilized age - as a case in point, the other day my family watched Episode IV: A New Hope, and it was pretty rad.
I don't know that the anglosphere's ideas are new; it seems that we are at best refining the bad ideas of Rousseau and Marx, and the rest of their lines. Environmentalism in its apocalyptic death cult aspect might well be new, but the rest seems like the old thought paths with different pronouns; replace class with a different identity classification, etc.
I don't know that I blame Hollywood exactly, I think it might have been mostly accidental. Stories need drama and conflict, and conflict with one's family is generally easily relatable and so fertile grounds for writing. Everyone with siblings remembers bickering and arguing with them, long miserable trips, etc. and parents can sympathize with kids driving you nuts. Even if you don't have siblings or kids, one can imagine the situation easily. Conversely, the good parts a little harder to spot (isn't that ever so?), but are directly experienced by people with regards to their friends. So all the virtues of family are easier conveyed by close friends on screen, while the perceived vices are unique to the family because you would just not be around friends like that. I note that in many movies and shows whether two characters are brothers or best friends is rarely an important distinction, unless one is about to betray the other, and that is a pretty old pattern going back a few centuries at least.
I am with you on older is better with regard to movies. There may have been a lot of schlock produced in the old days as now, but there were a hell of a lot of good ones made too, a feat apparently we are no longer able to match as a culture :(
I agree with this, though I think it's much more (2) than (1) or (3), but it needs a little more explanation because Charedim are roughly the same proportion of Brooklyn as they are in Israel, and they don't boost fertility there. I made a post about this: https://nonzionism.com/p/why-is-israel-fertile
That's a well written essay. (While I do have criticisms, I'll read it again and comment there rather than here in an attempt to encourage my readers to click your link.)
Also we should not forget the Mongolian experience
https://www.jamogrand.com/post/mongolian-mothers
Presented by the President themselves. (Might not work with pussy-grabber presidents I reckon)
Contra
https://www.fairplanet.org/story/medals-for-mothers/
middling
https://theworld.org/stories/2016/08/01/mongolia-where-motherhood-merits-medal
"The numbers speak for themselves. By the time 2005 rolled around, Mongolaia's fertility rate crashed to an all-time Mongolian low of 1.95 in 2005, while the world average hovered around 2.3.
But since then — largely thanks to the government upping its incentives in 2006 — the rate has started to rise. Mongolia's National statistics office reported an overall fertility rate of 2.69 children per woman in 2009. (World average for the period 2005 to 2010 is 2.5.)"
I feel looking for culturally based just-so stories even in their simplicity are too much to explain child less adulthood. It's a worldwide phenomenon, so blaming a correlation--- religiosity as membership declines at the same time -- hmmm) Having heard Korean women (in Tasmania) talk about their incel-chad man-o-sphere it's no wonder they do not feel valued. This is affecting choice ( a mismatch between choosers and aplicants) . If it is a choice which depends in part on a choice (of partner) maybe men need to lift their game rather than double down to dress as some sort of non-cross dressing tradcore drag act.
The worldwide phenomenon is itself part of a trend. Thousands of years ago humanity stumbled into a sort of agrarian cultural pit, where more children meant more agricultural output, but everyone was tied to the land and couldn't abandon oppressive local overlords. Innovation languished, poverty and inequality were the norm, and it wasn't until the advances from more mercantile areas like Greece that a different system gradually emerged. Today those societies that are lagging show high religiosity, poverty, high fertility, and other residuals of the agrarian cultural pit. Unfortunately it's the lagging societies and individuals that are evolutionarily more viable, as they are the ones who contribute overwelmingly to the future gene pool. The rest of us figured out that there's more to life than being baby machines, so Mother Nature is just shrugging and bestowing her love on those who are too backward to figure things like that out. Someday perhaps humanity as a whole will return to a blissful unreflective slumber, and Mother will coninue to smile.
① ostensibly a third of the population in any society is not at the height of their productivity let alone reproductivity, that is at least a third is either: growing up, growing old, ill, less able physically or mentally, or, dedicates themselves to non-productive activities (religious practices, elitist practices, shamanic practices, artistic practices) which, also ostensibly do the work of coding rituals to lubricate our conflicts into effervescent creative noyaux and not war. But if there are no children to hand these practices on to.... what is the point of them. ② Contra to the religious/fertility correlations: if the height of a medieval European career was an ostensibly celibate monk as pope, and this is an example of contra conspicuous display (I am so fit and successful I do not need to reproduce, look I'll swish my peacock frock coat and tale) it could only appear as an option (a runaway option) if a lot of women are doing the heavy lifting (but no medals for you who gracefully demur). I'd argue a decline in fertility here is the delayed result of a missmatch in signalling fitness (I am so fit I do not need to reproduce and just have a career). Just to be clear this is also a just-so story created for illustrative purposes, only, one in which the male careerist never mentions their family in powerful society, in honour or follwoing the model of priests or public servants who work for the crown (most bureaucracies in Europe start with clerics/clerks i.e those who can read and write (Latin). in which case the bugabear is religious practices and their shadowplay out of step with fitness realities.
I totally support blaming the French. It is usually a good first guess, and often the second as well. Third is usually to blame a German. It seems like most of the really bad ideas that caught on since the 1700’s have come from one of those two regions.
On the cultural side, one could probably do a fair bit of moving towards larger families by making good films and television featuring people with bigger families being happy instead of focusing on the misery of too many kids or siblings. That’s a big ask because once propaganda is a goal quality suffers, but it does occur to me that in many movies growing up having a big family was a source of strife not happiness. You’d want people to see the bigger family and say “I want that.”
teenagers, demigods that they are looking for role models, watch superhero movies, so they'll have to be superheroes with lotsa babies,
maybe Michelle Shock albums as soundtracks
" that's what I said a hundred and twenty babies"
https://www.songlyrics.com/michelle-shocked/when-i-grow-up-lyrics/
or
the other Swedish band
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d73tiBBzvFM
Unfortunately I'd have to say sometime around the 20th century the Anglosphere began to monopolize the market for bad ideas. Media which pathologizes family dynamics and formation is really just another part of the trend.
In a sense, it may be hard to blame Hollywood & Pals for that, since conservatives have been having more kids than leftists for a while, and if you're on the left like everybody in American media has been for as long as I've been aware of it, then inevitably you notice high conservative fertility with a feeling of suspicion and that starts to come through in your productions.
But frankly almost everything that comes out of the mainstream media to me now has the flavor of propoganda, and yes, quality has suffered. As a society I have no idea what America is supposed to do, but for individuals the schlocky quality of 21st century media makes it pretty easy to just tune it out completely, and find entertainment from a more civilized age - as a case in point, the other day my family watched Episode IV: A New Hope, and it was pretty rad.
I don't know that the anglosphere's ideas are new; it seems that we are at best refining the bad ideas of Rousseau and Marx, and the rest of their lines. Environmentalism in its apocalyptic death cult aspect might well be new, but the rest seems like the old thought paths with different pronouns; replace class with a different identity classification, etc.
I don't know that I blame Hollywood exactly, I think it might have been mostly accidental. Stories need drama and conflict, and conflict with one's family is generally easily relatable and so fertile grounds for writing. Everyone with siblings remembers bickering and arguing with them, long miserable trips, etc. and parents can sympathize with kids driving you nuts. Even if you don't have siblings or kids, one can imagine the situation easily. Conversely, the good parts a little harder to spot (isn't that ever so?), but are directly experienced by people with regards to their friends. So all the virtues of family are easier conveyed by close friends on screen, while the perceived vices are unique to the family because you would just not be around friends like that. I note that in many movies and shows whether two characters are brothers or best friends is rarely an important distinction, unless one is about to betray the other, and that is a pretty old pattern going back a few centuries at least.
I am with you on older is better with regard to movies. There may have been a lot of schlock produced in the old days as now, but there were a hell of a lot of good ones made too, a feat apparently we are no longer able to match as a culture :(
isn't israel totally vaxxed??? that rate will be falling fast
I agree with this, though I think it's much more (2) than (1) or (3), but it needs a little more explanation because Charedim are roughly the same proportion of Brooklyn as they are in Israel, and they don't boost fertility there. I made a post about this: https://nonzionism.com/p/why-is-israel-fertile
That's a well written essay. (While I do have criticisms, I'll read it again and comment there rather than here in an attempt to encourage my readers to click your link.)