Excellent essay, not the only reason why not, but definitely a major one.
One strong argument for childbirth by the civilized; There goes the neighborhood, if you don't then as you age you're neighbors, replacing those that die off will be imported cat and dog eating barbarians.
Personally though I find raising children satisfying and great fun. My oldest is a bit wobbly but I still have some hopes she'll turn out OK. My youngest who turned 60 a few months ago, is almost in my opinion, a responsible adult. ;-)
BTW; The first 50 years of raising them is the hardest, it gets easier after that.
Haha. Agree with your childbirth by the civilized argument - but that assumes that children will remain in their childhood towns, and in the structure of our current society, that's unfortunately rare
This essay helped me see more clearly how this kind of pleasure-focused teleology of the individual belies how liberals tend to view the use of space.
This is especially notable in how it's inculcated into young people's notion that living in the city is high-status. Not only is it high status, but the reasons for living in the city (all the reasons given to justify or "sell" it to college bound youth) reduce to the belief that the city is to function as a theme park. What is the telos of a theme park: amusement, fun, excitement, pleasure. An implicit teleology that the point of life is the pursuit of pleasure leads to viewing reality in this way.
Thus parts of Brooklyn have been transformed not into fruitful neighborhoods to be inherited and cultivated over generations, but into commodified, sterile pleasure arcades.
Thus rural villages in New Hampshire are not treated as someone's town and home, but a park in service to seasonal leaf-watching.
Maybe strangely, the acknowledgement of this teleology is not hard to produce. I've known many city-stricken millenials who, when this is pointed out, are happy to admit that this is how they see the world and want it to work, often being frustrated when it does not cater to their amusement. Literarily, George Saunders even shows its grotesque debasement of humanity in many of his short stories, in which all parts of history and culture are susceptible to becoming commodified theme parks.
An incredibly challenging piece, and an important one. Kurtz's angle cuts to the heart of liberalism's failure, and why a healthy civilization requires a culture that includes formal constraints. (A hard pill to swallow for someone raised liberal, and who feels liberal in his bones.)
As a 60+ y.o. childless man I found myself nodding & re-reading. Thought provoking. I was born in '60, ALWAYS "assumed" I'd have kids. Yet I ended up in a series of relationships where each fell pregnant, found inconvenient and moved on. I think I selected by (or was selected by) a "Type". So here I am, well off and alone 😔
I've always quibbled over the two words Moral & Ethical and your teloelogical vs liberal parse makes sense. In a definitive sense Morality is imposed from without, Ethics, based on Purpose, must come from within. Our Western society has NO Purpose, only Pleasure. It is, and does, feel entirely shallow, meaningless.
Only now, ageing, do I grok the PURPOSE of children. In a very real sense, when I die, I'm the Loser that couldn't continue a million year line of Survivors, all my ancestors 💔... I am the Last. 😪
AussieMan, are you a believer? Do you want a family? Men are so fortunate that their fertility doesn't end as early as women. Did you see the 80 year old man who just fathered a child?
Perhaps one of those areas where so-called neo pagans (BAPism?) and Catholics might ally. Both worldviews contend that men and women should simply do that thing we can naturally intuit we were created to do (yes that thing).
LOL, I'm not religious, but I AM philosophical, and I'm suddenly enjoying this polemic, and I see both sides of it. If I may interject on both sides, to bring God into a rational argument I find it a bit heavy-handed and disrespectful, even though I feel that the statement is likely true. Interjecting on the other side, no rational proof of non-existence of anything exists, and the skeptical commitment is therefore irrational and religious in nature, rather than scientific. Furthermore, to even attempt a non-existence argument one needs to have a definition. If you were to try to define "God" you'd end up with a mere bunch of scattered attributes pertinent to just one religion, probably. As for my feelings about the God-containing statement above is that it constitutes an admission of having an incorrect definition of "God", and that perhaps some other religion (dare I say some "pagan" one?) may have had it more right. It is an inspiring post, if a bit heavy-handed.
Another banger. A brief aside re: “children are not toys.” I know several normies with 3 kids. Almost all of them had two of the same sex first and “were trying for a girl/boy.” Most people who get a “complete set” stop at 2. Just underscores how we’ve internalized children-as-commodities.
Can confirm culture's obsession with this. My first two (of my four children) are a boy and a girl. People would occasionally say to me, "oh now you can be done!"
I'm an Actuary by trade, and so I think a lot about demography and incentives.
The fundamental problem is that even if you could conceive of a materialist incentive system to bring about higher births, there is no materialist incentive for anyone to bring it about. Creating the new system would require individual sacrifice, but individual sacrifice is precluded by the materialist system.
Of course, people talking about "do it for God" have issues too. When you slam visions of the eternal against material reality, material reality often slaps it down (and sometimes you end up far worse then the merely practical). It's easier to swim upstream in better incentive structure, and there is some role for those that understand incentive structures to shepherd them.
I don't know how to resolve these things. I neither want to trust in faith alone when it seems suicidal, but I also understand that it takes faith alone to overcome bad equilibriums.
I think the solution will arrive by accident. Or at least by God’s hand, and not by man’s. Man hasn’t solved this problem before, and he’s not about to now.
And now, as liberalism reels on its knees, its rotten core unmasked—the cult of the self in its inadequacy laid bare—what, pray tell, comes next?
There is more, unfortunately, for our children’s future is assailed on multiple fronts. It is not just liberalism that presents a civilizational issue, but its bedfellow: the technocracy. Put differently, it is Paul Kingsnorth’s Machine.
A fundamental realignment seems all but inevitable, yet where will it come from?
A brilliant, well-researched, and incisive essay, as always.
Two weeks ago, on your note, you asked me why I thought fertility was in decline. I didn’t blow you off -- I just couldn’t think of a cohesive answer! This article arguably captures the root cause.
Many thinkers believe we are entering the post-secular world because it is the religious who will simply outbreed (and outcreed) those who hold liberal views. Then again, who knows with technology and other factors.
But Ive always suspected Israel is the prototype of what future nations in the post-liberal world look like.
Israel is probably one of the few developed nations in the world that is able to be both authentically ‘trad’ but without having to seal itself in a sanitized cultural bubble.
This is in contrast to the Gulf States, who in spite of their reputation, have basically no immune system to survive modernity.
Very well put. Additionally, there is an issue of "ownership" of children that's been changing across the centuries; even noticeable across decades. I got divorced in 1982 in the middle of a recession, having lost my day job and part-time business and having credit card and other debts, so I got off very lightly burdened; but I remember the government-assigned lawyer for my wife trying her best to extract from me whatever she could by shaming me into making unrealistic commitments, saying "You expect the government to pay for your daughter's education? She's YOUR DAUGHTER!!!", and in a moment of sudden inspiration I replied to her, "When my daughter earns more thanks to her education, is she going to pay extra taxes to me, or to the government?" Effectively, today, our children BELONG to the government; not to their parents.
You can’t just make child rearing “high status” because no one is incentivized to due this long term. You have to focus on God first and not care about status and then you can “be fruitful and multiply”
Amazing. I hope that your book makes the NY Times best seller list. You will deserve it. And the people to whom the NY Times best seller list is important, they need to read it.
Thank you, very kind. I'm working on publishing a book early next year (although on the subject of personally raising children and leaving them a legacy, rather than national birthrates)
“It’s the economy, stupid.” -some Democrat political hack, some time
The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the worst books I’ve ever read. Of course, I did read the whole thing which I can’t say the same of Ayn Rand’s tripe. I didn’t even make it 10% into Atlas Shrugged.
People aren’t having kids in the US because they’re expensive. Or rather, people have been convinced that they are expensive. And killing the planet. You know that whole “over-population” bullshit we were shoveled in undergrad social studies classes. The planet’s population was supposed to be like what? 25 billion by now? And it’s not. It’s all lies.
What I think is hysterical is countries like China- central planning authoritative paradise of tyranny with a very real purpose - that of the State as God - who are about to find out what happens when you muck with Nature. China will have less population than the US within a few decades. Statistics are a bitch. Purpose in and of itself isn’t enough to get you out of a population collapse.
Having the government get out of the way on the other hand, now there’s an idea. Oh, and preventing the brainwashing of small school children in regard to overpopulation and environmental bullshit bandied about by the Marxist useful idiots might also be a good starting place as well.
Economy is definitely a factor. However, I think many people still wouldn’t have them even if they had the money. In fact there are several governments financially incentivizing people having kids and doesn’t work
> who are about to find out what happens when you muck with Nature. China will have less population than the US within a few decades. Statistics are a bitch.
At least in China they can in the very end resort to ordering people to have children, and message to the people (through media, education, campaigns) that being without 2 kids makes you seen as a sore loser. In the West this would be a non-starter.
I think the Chinese government already instituted a 3 child policy, but young people seem to be soured on marrying young and having lots of kids. It’s crazy expensive to get married and a lot of pressure, especially on the young men
It’s too late. Nothing they do will have much effect on their population implosion in the next 100 years. You have approximately three generations of missing people heavily skewed male. Their official statistics don’t show this, but their official statistics are lies. Because in communism that’s how you keep breathing. We know that while the one child policy was in place that a lot of female pregnancies were either aborted or given up for foreign adoption. There is no way in hades that their population is the normal distribution like they claim.
And the young people there have already been brainwashed to believe that having children is bad. They are far more interested in being single. The CCP can change the policy, but brainwashing a generation of youth, one skewed male and small in comparison to previous generations, into the complete opposite position to which you brainwashed them in the first place is one hell of an endeavor. I doubt it gets very far.
> Their official statistics don’t show this, but their official statistics are lies. Because in communism that’s how you keep breathing.
These kind of notions are old wives tales, from the era of Stalinism and the highly inefficient eastern bloc style communism
China is not that much of a communist country to begin with, despite what the token "official ideology" is. It's just not liberal and not totally free market, but they still operate within a market economy, and could not care less forced equality, and have proven to be highly efficient.
“Children will never be an independent marker of success, simply because a lot of unsuccessful people have them.”
This is not the case in the Amish sub-culture. Children are status, add to the economy of the home helping to make many of them very successful as we define it. I suspect that they also define success very differently. I think we can all learn from that.
I agree, but this is a different category of status. The Amish are able to status-reward behavior perceived as virtuous because of the density and insularity of there communities in ways that liberal societies cannot due to their structure.
It doesn’t matter to them. The Amish don’t even vote. They are “in the world” but not “of the world.” They are religious and therefore have their higher purpose for children. In fact, the Amish birth rate is very healthy, even doubling in last 20+ years, if I recall correctly.
I don't think that Liberalism is necessarily at odds with fertility, or that you even need all that much of a Telos for it.
Man is hardcoded to have children, not having any kids is a literal evolutionary failure state, and every cell in your body will scream at you that you fucked up when you grow old without kids.
The main driver of fertility loss are not women having zero kids, it is women having only one kid, the university degree children as status game optimisation thing is precisely what is happening.
There is a culture that tries to scare women into not having any children (The List), but that is mostly because having children early is genuinly bad for you in the Western world, you will lose status among your academia friends, and that also feels like a death sentence to humans.
I see two general paths of ideas to fix fertility within a Western liberal world:
1. Decouple status and academia
2. Make it so that having kids does not hamstring your academic potential
Both are not easy to reach at all, but more realistic than transforming the West into an illiberal society. Liberalism is hyperdominant, it took over the globe in the blink of an eye, and stomped the collectivist UDSSR and the Facist axis so hard they still don't know what hit them. It has it's issues, but a fundamentally illiberal society will also lose the benefits of liberalism, and those are trendemous.
Can’t disagree with this well written piece, sorry to say. I think if we ask the question, why do we have children, we are half way to giving up? If we hesitate to do what is difficult, those who can’t be bothered won’t bother and those who hesitate may as well not bother. That leaves the last cohort pursuing their own lifestyle choices. Some individuals will have faith in the telos, but on their own accounts and not with the culture. It does feel that as we become more and more consumers rather than producers, we forget what it is that makes us authentically human. If we do not reproduce (or if we cannot, at least respect those that do) then what are we? Why are we here? We ignore the telos - the light that draws us forwards, as well as our connection with all who came before us, all the way back to the dawn of time and reality itself.
I guess I always assumed that in liberal society, folks had an innate belief in the goal of advancing and benefiting society. By which I mean taking paths which lead to more prosperity for everyone, and innovating the ability to do beneficial things that we could not do before.
Adopting such a view, it is inherently obvious that society cannot continue if one does not supply new people (children) to fill it. Immigrants are problematical as replacements in that they may not share these values.
I guess reality proves me wrong. So many folks choose things that make life worse for everyone. The wealthy elite guarantee that wages and prosperity accrues only to them, no matter how much societal prosperity increases.
I still suspect that the inherent desire to have children and the joy in raising them would lead to a higher birth rate if wages were keeping up with the prosperity of society.
Excellent essay, not the only reason why not, but definitely a major one.
One strong argument for childbirth by the civilized; There goes the neighborhood, if you don't then as you age you're neighbors, replacing those that die off will be imported cat and dog eating barbarians.
Personally though I find raising children satisfying and great fun. My oldest is a bit wobbly but I still have some hopes she'll turn out OK. My youngest who turned 60 a few months ago, is almost in my opinion, a responsible adult. ;-)
BTW; The first 50 years of raising them is the hardest, it gets easier after that.
Haha. Agree with your childbirth by the civilized argument - but that assumes that children will remain in their childhood towns, and in the structure of our current society, that's unfortunately rare
Insightful as always.
This essay helped me see more clearly how this kind of pleasure-focused teleology of the individual belies how liberals tend to view the use of space.
This is especially notable in how it's inculcated into young people's notion that living in the city is high-status. Not only is it high status, but the reasons for living in the city (all the reasons given to justify or "sell" it to college bound youth) reduce to the belief that the city is to function as a theme park. What is the telos of a theme park: amusement, fun, excitement, pleasure. An implicit teleology that the point of life is the pursuit of pleasure leads to viewing reality in this way.
Thus parts of Brooklyn have been transformed not into fruitful neighborhoods to be inherited and cultivated over generations, but into commodified, sterile pleasure arcades.
Thus rural villages in New Hampshire are not treated as someone's town and home, but a park in service to seasonal leaf-watching.
Maybe strangely, the acknowledgement of this teleology is not hard to produce. I've known many city-stricken millenials who, when this is pointed out, are happy to admit that this is how they see the world and want it to work, often being frustrated when it does not cater to their amusement. Literarily, George Saunders even shows its grotesque debasement of humanity in many of his short stories, in which all parts of history and culture are susceptible to becoming commodified theme parks.
Thank you. And yes, Pleasure Island never lasts forever, and watching your childless friends turn into donkeys as they age is quite sad
An incredibly challenging piece, and an important one. Kurtz's angle cuts to the heart of liberalism's failure, and why a healthy civilization requires a culture that includes formal constraints. (A hard pill to swallow for someone raised liberal, and who feels liberal in his bones.)
As a 60+ y.o. childless man I found myself nodding & re-reading. Thought provoking. I was born in '60, ALWAYS "assumed" I'd have kids. Yet I ended up in a series of relationships where each fell pregnant, found inconvenient and moved on. I think I selected by (or was selected by) a "Type". So here I am, well off and alone 😔
I've always quibbled over the two words Moral & Ethical and your teloelogical vs liberal parse makes sense. In a definitive sense Morality is imposed from without, Ethics, based on Purpose, must come from within. Our Western society has NO Purpose, only Pleasure. It is, and does, feel entirely shallow, meaningless.
Only now, ageing, do I grok the PURPOSE of children. In a very real sense, when I die, I'm the Loser that couldn't continue a million year line of Survivors, all my ancestors 💔... I am the Last. 😪
AussieMan, are you a believer? Do you want a family? Men are so fortunate that their fertility doesn't end as early as women. Did you see the 80 year old man who just fathered a child?
https://people.com/the-oldest-hollywood-dads-6116784
Just a reminder that older men father children and raise them without the distraction of making it in this life.
Wow, bro. All those years of copulation and absolutely nothing to show for it. Sad.
He just shared that as a regret. You repeat it to scold or shame him?
All these years on earth and no compassion. Sad.
Perhaps one of those areas where so-called neo pagans (BAPism?) and Catholics might ally. Both worldviews contend that men and women should simply do that thing we can naturally intuit we were created to do (yes that thing).
I think that some degree of carnal irrational childbirth is probably ordained by God in some way.
Why bring God into this? His existence is dubious.
You are free to doubt it for a time
LOL, I'm not religious, but I AM philosophical, and I'm suddenly enjoying this polemic, and I see both sides of it. If I may interject on both sides, to bring God into a rational argument I find it a bit heavy-handed and disrespectful, even though I feel that the statement is likely true. Interjecting on the other side, no rational proof of non-existence of anything exists, and the skeptical commitment is therefore irrational and religious in nature, rather than scientific. Furthermore, to even attempt a non-existence argument one needs to have a definition. If you were to try to define "God" you'd end up with a mere bunch of scattered attributes pertinent to just one religion, probably. As for my feelings about the God-containing statement above is that it constitutes an admission of having an incorrect definition of "God", and that perhaps some other religion (dare I say some "pagan" one?) may have had it more right. It is an inspiring post, if a bit heavy-handed.
Another banger. A brief aside re: “children are not toys.” I know several normies with 3 kids. Almost all of them had two of the same sex first and “were trying for a girl/boy.” Most people who get a “complete set” stop at 2. Just underscores how we’ve internalized children-as-commodities.
Can confirm culture's obsession with this. My first two (of my four children) are a boy and a girl. People would occasionally say to me, "oh now you can be done!"
Thanks friend
I'm an Actuary by trade, and so I think a lot about demography and incentives.
The fundamental problem is that even if you could conceive of a materialist incentive system to bring about higher births, there is no materialist incentive for anyone to bring it about. Creating the new system would require individual sacrifice, but individual sacrifice is precluded by the materialist system.
Of course, people talking about "do it for God" have issues too. When you slam visions of the eternal against material reality, material reality often slaps it down (and sometimes you end up far worse then the merely practical). It's easier to swim upstream in better incentive structure, and there is some role for those that understand incentive structures to shepherd them.
I don't know how to resolve these things. I neither want to trust in faith alone when it seems suicidal, but I also understand that it takes faith alone to overcome bad equilibriums.
> material reality
Well there is also a transcendent reality.
This sounds about right.
I think the solution will arrive by accident. Or at least by God’s hand, and not by man’s. Man hasn’t solved this problem before, and he’s not about to now.
And now, as liberalism reels on its knees, its rotten core unmasked—the cult of the self in its inadequacy laid bare—what, pray tell, comes next?
There is more, unfortunately, for our children’s future is assailed on multiple fronts. It is not just liberalism that presents a civilizational issue, but its bedfellow: the technocracy. Put differently, it is Paul Kingsnorth’s Machine.
A fundamental realignment seems all but inevitable, yet where will it come from?
A brilliant, well-researched, and incisive essay, as always.
Two weeks ago, on your note, you asked me why I thought fertility was in decline. I didn’t blow you off -- I just couldn’t think of a cohesive answer! This article arguably captures the root cause.
Many thinkers believe we are entering the post-secular world because it is the religious who will simply outbreed (and outcreed) those who hold liberal views. Then again, who knows with technology and other factors.
Technology is the primary shaper of the future, whether we like it or not.
Especially since nations are now competing globally.
Technology is the new Pope.
This is more or less just a personal hunch.
But Ive always suspected Israel is the prototype of what future nations in the post-liberal world look like.
Israel is probably one of the few developed nations in the world that is able to be both authentically ‘trad’ but without having to seal itself in a sanitized cultural bubble.
This is in contrast to the Gulf States, who in spite of their reputation, have basically no immune system to survive modernity.
Very well put. Additionally, there is an issue of "ownership" of children that's been changing across the centuries; even noticeable across decades. I got divorced in 1982 in the middle of a recession, having lost my day job and part-time business and having credit card and other debts, so I got off very lightly burdened; but I remember the government-assigned lawyer for my wife trying her best to extract from me whatever she could by shaming me into making unrealistic commitments, saying "You expect the government to pay for your daughter's education? She's YOUR DAUGHTER!!!", and in a moment of sudden inspiration I replied to her, "When my daughter earns more thanks to her education, is she going to pay extra taxes to me, or to the government?" Effectively, today, our children BELONG to the government; not to their parents.
You can’t just make child rearing “high status” because no one is incentivized to due this long term. You have to focus on God first and not care about status and then you can “be fruitful and multiply”
Amazing. I hope that your book makes the NY Times best seller list. You will deserve it. And the people to whom the NY Times best seller list is important, they need to read it.
Thank you, very kind. I'm working on publishing a book early next year (although on the subject of personally raising children and leaving them a legacy, rather than national birthrates)
I thought that this might be a chapter for it.
“It’s the economy, stupid.” -some Democrat political hack, some time
The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the worst books I’ve ever read. Of course, I did read the whole thing which I can’t say the same of Ayn Rand’s tripe. I didn’t even make it 10% into Atlas Shrugged.
People aren’t having kids in the US because they’re expensive. Or rather, people have been convinced that they are expensive. And killing the planet. You know that whole “over-population” bullshit we were shoveled in undergrad social studies classes. The planet’s population was supposed to be like what? 25 billion by now? And it’s not. It’s all lies.
What I think is hysterical is countries like China- central planning authoritative paradise of tyranny with a very real purpose - that of the State as God - who are about to find out what happens when you muck with Nature. China will have less population than the US within a few decades. Statistics are a bitch. Purpose in and of itself isn’t enough to get you out of a population collapse.
Having the government get out of the way on the other hand, now there’s an idea. Oh, and preventing the brainwashing of small school children in regard to overpopulation and environmental bullshit bandied about by the Marxist useful idiots might also be a good starting place as well.
Reference: I have the T-shirt.
Economy is definitely a factor. However, I think many people still wouldn’t have them even if they had the money. In fact there are several governments financially incentivizing people having kids and doesn’t work
> who are about to find out what happens when you muck with Nature. China will have less population than the US within a few decades. Statistics are a bitch.
At least in China they can in the very end resort to ordering people to have children, and message to the people (through media, education, campaigns) that being without 2 kids makes you seen as a sore loser. In the West this would be a non-starter.
I think the Chinese government already instituted a 3 child policy, but young people seem to be soured on marrying young and having lots of kids. It’s crazy expensive to get married and a lot of pressure, especially on the young men
It’s too late. Nothing they do will have much effect on their population implosion in the next 100 years. You have approximately three generations of missing people heavily skewed male. Their official statistics don’t show this, but their official statistics are lies. Because in communism that’s how you keep breathing. We know that while the one child policy was in place that a lot of female pregnancies were either aborted or given up for foreign adoption. There is no way in hades that their population is the normal distribution like they claim.
And the young people there have already been brainwashed to believe that having children is bad. They are far more interested in being single. The CCP can change the policy, but brainwashing a generation of youth, one skewed male and small in comparison to previous generations, into the complete opposite position to which you brainwashed them in the first place is one hell of an endeavor. I doubt it gets very far.
> Their official statistics don’t show this, but their official statistics are lies. Because in communism that’s how you keep breathing.
These kind of notions are old wives tales, from the era of Stalinism and the highly inefficient eastern bloc style communism
China is not that much of a communist country to begin with, despite what the token "official ideology" is. It's just not liberal and not totally free market, but they still operate within a market economy, and could not care less forced equality, and have proven to be highly efficient.
“Children will never be an independent marker of success, simply because a lot of unsuccessful people have them.”
This is not the case in the Amish sub-culture. Children are status, add to the economy of the home helping to make many of them very successful as we define it. I suspect that they also define success very differently. I think we can all learn from that.
I agree, but this is a different category of status. The Amish are able to status-reward behavior perceived as virtuous because of the density and insularity of there communities in ways that liberal societies cannot due to their structure.
I explain the Amish dynamics here: https://becomingnoble.substack.com/p/its-embarrassing-to-be-a-stay-at
It doesn’t matter to them. The Amish don’t even vote. They are “in the world” but not “of the world.” They are religious and therefore have their higher purpose for children. In fact, the Amish birth rate is very healthy, even doubling in last 20+ years, if I recall correctly.
I don't think that Liberalism is necessarily at odds with fertility, or that you even need all that much of a Telos for it.
Man is hardcoded to have children, not having any kids is a literal evolutionary failure state, and every cell in your body will scream at you that you fucked up when you grow old without kids.
The main driver of fertility loss are not women having zero kids, it is women having only one kid, the university degree children as status game optimisation thing is precisely what is happening.
There is a culture that tries to scare women into not having any children (The List), but that is mostly because having children early is genuinly bad for you in the Western world, you will lose status among your academia friends, and that also feels like a death sentence to humans.
I see two general paths of ideas to fix fertility within a Western liberal world:
1. Decouple status and academia
2. Make it so that having kids does not hamstring your academic potential
Both are not easy to reach at all, but more realistic than transforming the West into an illiberal society. Liberalism is hyperdominant, it took over the globe in the blink of an eye, and stomped the collectivist UDSSR and the Facist axis so hard they still don't know what hit them. It has it's issues, but a fundamentally illiberal society will also lose the benefits of liberalism, and those are trendemous.
Can’t disagree with this well written piece, sorry to say. I think if we ask the question, why do we have children, we are half way to giving up? If we hesitate to do what is difficult, those who can’t be bothered won’t bother and those who hesitate may as well not bother. That leaves the last cohort pursuing their own lifestyle choices. Some individuals will have faith in the telos, but on their own accounts and not with the culture. It does feel that as we become more and more consumers rather than producers, we forget what it is that makes us authentically human. If we do not reproduce (or if we cannot, at least respect those that do) then what are we? Why are we here? We ignore the telos - the light that draws us forwards, as well as our connection with all who came before us, all the way back to the dawn of time and reality itself.
Spengler notes that if a society is asking "should we have children" it is already too late for it
I guess I always assumed that in liberal society, folks had an innate belief in the goal of advancing and benefiting society. By which I mean taking paths which lead to more prosperity for everyone, and innovating the ability to do beneficial things that we could not do before.
Adopting such a view, it is inherently obvious that society cannot continue if one does not supply new people (children) to fill it. Immigrants are problematical as replacements in that they may not share these values.
I guess reality proves me wrong. So many folks choose things that make life worse for everyone. The wealthy elite guarantee that wages and prosperity accrues only to them, no matter how much societal prosperity increases.
I still suspect that the inherent desire to have children and the joy in raising them would lead to a higher birth rate if wages were keeping up with the prosperity of society.