The Baby Bust – Part Three
Why modern culture (i.e., progress) leads to the Baby Bust.
In a world where the “best” we can do often ends up being no more than simply muddling forward in an ever-declining entropic shuffling along of society, we occasionally like to pause and take in the scenery, a crumbling landscape of glorious days long gone by, and muse as to the how, and why.
Previously, I discussed the aspects of urbanization and education as influences upon the current decline in the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), not just in the Collective West, but also throughout Eastern Asia and around the planet. In this article, I dive into the phenomenon of culture, as it pertains to influencing the desire to have more…or fewer babies.
When arguing the case for (or against) the natalist trends of today, most people will focus on one of many items that pertain to a wide-ranging grab-bag of goodies I refer to as the Cultural Collective. But what is culture in this respect?
A culture is clearly defined as the customary beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a racial, ethnic, social, or religious group. It is comprised of the characteristics shared by people in a given place or time. Culture changes, around the world, through the passage of time, across generations, and from tangible events which affect said society.
Another way of defining culture, specifically for the purpose of examining procreation, is a society’s set of priorities. I have categorized these priorities into 10 major motivators, affecting many people over the last few generations. I give a brief summation of each but may delve more into one or more items in subsequent articles.
My Top 10 Cultural Collective Motivators
1. The Pursuit of (Individual) Happiness
Ah…the Pursuit of Happiness. Words enshrined into the founding documents of the United States of America, and echoed around the world as a God-given, inalienable right. But what provides happiness? Is it more important to pursue individual gratification? Or does happiness derive from sacrificing one’s own comforts for a broader, less tangible (yet aesthetically pleasing) achievement? Does one choose to buy things for oneself, or put off the pursuit of Consumerism for the realization of family?
2. Live in the Now
The terms “You Only Live Once (YOLO)” and “Eat, Pray, Love” come to mind when I consider the aspect of Living in the Now. It plays upon the above motivator of The Pursuit of (Individual) Happiness, in that people choose to focus on short-term pleasures that personally make their lives more comfortable, more enriched, or more fulfilled, rather than pursuing a path that looks to make things better for other people (i.e., their offspring), well past the time when they will shake off this mortal coil.
3. Battle of the Sexes
Oh…don’t even get me started on the rise of sexist movements – whether feminism or Men Going Their Own Way (i.e., MGTOW) – or others – that focus on the plight of one sex, and whose remedies only seem to fuel an ever-growing rift between the biologically-separated halves of homo sapiens, which are required to join together if they ever wish to continue forward their existence.
4. The Decline of Coupling
Number 3 (above) eventually leads to Number 4. However, it’s more than just having the two halves of humanity get together to bump uglies and make a baby. Coupling requires a long-term commitment (usually in the form of some kind of marriage) to create a nuclear family. Any society that neglects the nuclear family tends to have a precipitous drop in the continuity of its members.
5. Who Needs God?
“God is dead, and we have killed him.” Thus wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in 1882, in reference to the decline of Christianity in Western Europe. However, the same may be attributed to any of the major religious faiths, which generally have a tendency to promote family and the principle of “go forth and multiply.” Religion also has a tendency to not only promote a nuclear family culture, but also to inculcate its adherents with the drive to create a better world for said future generations. Ergo, a decline in attendance to the institutions of these religious tenets nearly always leads to a decline in future folks to follow the faith.
6. The Climate Doomer Cult
How many young people want to bring even one child (let alone a whole litter) into a world that is bound to go to heck-in-a-handbasket in the next 10 (15, 20, 25, 30…) years, thanks to SUVs and cow-farts? Yes, this “doomerism” has a measurable impact on the decision to not procreate.
7. The Government Doomer Cult
Conversely, there seems to be a growing sector of societies around the world that see problems with their government’s stability (you know, to the level of Civil War 2.0), which really leads a lot of young people to just enjoy the now and not subject any future kids to the “catastrophic wars” which are “bound to come.”
8. The Normie Perception (fewer is the norm)
Diverging away from the above Doomerism, we see that people who grow up in a world where fewer people are coupling, and those that do couple, tend to have only one or two children (at most) tend to consider that to be the norm they should aspire towards. So, instead of thinking it normal to have 4+ children, a lot of young people today think “One and done, or maybe….two.”
9. The Healthy Are Disappearing (mental and physical health)
In order to produce a fair number of offspring, any given species needs to possess both physical and mental health. A decline in either (or both) tends to lead to a reduction in both fertility and the long-term viability of the species’ offspring. So, anything that could deteriorate the physical or mental health of a human society should also be considered when tabulating the viability of long-term reproduction rates.
10. The Last Act of Rebellion (I am the last generation)
A trend I have personally seen manifested, at least online, are open acts of defiance against “the system.” Whether it is comments from young people in China proclaiming they will be the last generation, or the Commentariat on various YouTube channels reciting the mantra, “The wolves are upset that the sheep won’t reproduce,” the result is the same. As a last act of rebellion against what is perceived to be an obligatory march towards the Handmaid’s Tale, young people (of both sexes) are outright refusing to pursue childbearing.
Conclusion
People can argue the merits or the moral aspects of any of the above-mentioned factors regarding lifestyle or family planning. That is their prerogative. I only list these as observed considerations of my overall analysis and assessment of the future potential for humanity to survive into the subsequent centuries, as they have for roughly the last 300,000 or so years.
Culture is one of the easiest considerations to address when it comes to influencing trends in the Baby Bust. However, the stickiness of culture, and the broad spectrum of inputs to said culture, makes it very difficult to have either a sizeable or lasting effect on the trend of “child-production” that a lot of leaders (political, cultural, or business) today seem to think. One cannot simply walk into the land of Mordor, or force young people to couple, give birth repeatedly, and raise said rugrats at the cost of years of personal gratification, just for the good of the State – no matter how many billions of taxpayer dollars are borrowed into existence for the project. Sorry. That’s just not how humanity saves itself.
But I guess I’m just a “doomer.”