I have a new outlook on the matter of our long-term prospects of population. We, the human race, will not prosper. It’s a choice and I think most will not make the right one.
Just to review the backdrop since this probably comes as a shock to some: First, population growth was a huge deal about a generation ago; it was one of, maybe the greatest cause of the technocratic arm of the liberal world, occupying the space more recently held by ‘global warming’ and now by ‘climate change’ or ‘climatism’. The central thesis was that humanity was growing out of control, sucking up or destroying all the global natural resources and that mathematically, we would reach a point of no return and destroy ourselves by a variety of self-inflicted methods. Therefore, population growth had to be stopped, first, by liberal self-choice, second, by global abortion promotion, third, by universal free contraception, and forth or maybe it was first, by a comprehensive range of government and technocratic disincentives. All these measures worked.
What was not originally calculated by socialist leaning population activists was that less kids would free up personal capital in a way that even third world families and individuals would have some measure of short-term material gain, or wealth, caused by smaller or no families, and that the experience of that material prosperity would become the principal driver of lower birthrates. This too worked so well that it’s even reversing birth rates in proliferating destinations like India and most of Africa. Having an air conditioner and a cell phone sure beats adding another two or three mouths to feed, or so the logic would seem to go.
Here in America, the aura of prosperity, the expectation of universal fame, and the trimmings of wealth culture, along with the skyrocketing cost of living, medical services, and all the financial pieces needed to get a kid from infancy to adult success, have all conspired to disincentivize childbirth and parenting, and that’s even before considering the war zone of what would normally be an intact stable home with two parents.
Throughout this process, parenting has come under considerable attack given that it’s the result of a two stable heterosexual parents making a decision to replicate themselves out of a union of love. What could be more repulsive to the modern woke progressive and the broadening constituencies of malignant perverts? ‘Family’ is indeed now a hated and embattled concept (by many) under full assault.
All of this is just to get up to speed on why we are now looking at the prospect of population decline. In fact, Western democracies outside the US have such a deficit that they will likely not be able to determine their own destinies as such, much beyond the next 30 years. The US is not too far behind that trend. The needed replacement birthrate of 2.1 births per family is failed and there is no counter trend to reverse the slide. By approximately 2050, the world’s population will begin to show a gross decline. Less births, fewer parents, even fewer births; the mathematical certainty that ruled back in the 1970s and 1980s showing a world headed to overcrowding, has now reversed and now is in a self-reinforcing trend of depopulation that no linear birth-spurt will override. The globe is headed toward depopulation, maybe extinction, but expect some form of reorganization from localized groups that choose to remain fertile. Those groups will not likely follow our present glowing images of ‘the future’. Forget Mars, forget living on an earth of ‘Jetson’ efficiency. A smaller population dominated by peoples of third world and agrarian orientation will likely not support the utopian technocratic notions imagined by folks like Elon Musk.
‘Be fruitful and multiply’
Moving forward, not even the natalist, Christians, or any other group will have the critical mass influence to effect any change in the trend already well under way. Even authoritarian governments are failing their quest to repopulate. The ‘best case’ scenario is that few individual sects, populations, and ethnicities that choose to reproduce themselves will become stand-alone islands of humanity while the rest of the world devolves into decay and eventually cultural and literal extinction.
One might rightfully ask, does any of this really matter? Prior thriving civilizations are buried under forests, deserts, sunken under the sea. If it means anything to you, I can only suggest that it matters to your children, theirs, and to whomever comes afterwards. You are here and are reading this because everyone in your parentage and ancestral line cared enough to conceive you, keep you alive instead of aborting you or throwing you over a cliff onto watery rocks and they nurtured you however imperfectly, to where you could see the sun rise this day. There’s something twisted wrong with dissing their longsuffering perseverance if you declare your identification with a nihilistic passive mass suicide.
Procreation is a choice as is the abstinence thereof. It was stamped into you at a cellular level to do what needed to be done but it is easily overridden in the modern world. It’s the basis of that choice that’s concerning. It’s not some certainty of wars, famine, or hardships that causes us to decline procreation but rather abundance. A famous experiment took a colony of mice and gave them everything they could ever need for a secure life. At first, they ate well, reproduced and thrived, but later set to fighting and abandoning breeding. They colony collapsed and went extinct. The scientist tried again, and the same outcome resulted. He did the experiment 17 times and every time, the colony collapsed. We are now that colony.
‘The meek shall inherit the earth’
I’d never suggest that anyone should produce offspring apart from a secure home and a commitment to raise the child well. Anything less should be meticulously avoided. It’s the platform that undergirds this that needs the toughest love. Young women ultimately do have to sacrifice much more in an infant’s and child’s early years. That also means that the young man must be prepared to take up the economic slack and they both have to put a lot of ‘dreams’ and diversions on ice for at least twenty years. Yes, the dreaded traditional family so antithetical to everything, the liberal education taught to our young now.
At a careless glance (or auto-rhetorical hate) it might seem I’d endorse a ‘Handmaidens Tale’ dystopian future. No. We’re in a social environment where a majority of liberated women are choosing less or anything but reproductive destiny. If I have any message at all, it’s this: their decision will stand but so will the consequences. These will come in two phases. Within the lifetimes of our youngest, they will see the emergence of a two-tier society wherein one side yet enjoys the joys and benefits of familial love. The childless sect will not be such an attractive alternative as they age and struggle alone, their influencer years behind them. They’ll paint it up with lipstick, but it’ll look like a caricature of happiness. Long term, some few groups, nations, tribes, sects will successfully repopulate themselves. They will inherit the earth. Choose wisely.
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