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Suicide by Culture
- danieltillett 9y agoIn the long run all that matters is demographics.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- thriftwy 9y agoNope. In the long run all that matters is culture. Small community may thrive. Community that was absorbed by different culture, no matter how large, is no longer yours.
- danieltillett 9y agoNot if your culture doesn’t have children.
- panic 9y agoIt has more to do with where you're raised than who your parents are. Second-generation immigrants often have wildly different culture than their parents.
- thriftwy 9y agoNot a single one? I guess you can survive a few generations on fertility of 1.4.
- usrusr 9y agoAnd as a bonus, all members of the next generation will inevitable be children to that subset of the culture who did breed. Bouncing back would be easy, particularly if the low birthrate is more a wild mix of family sizes than a uniform one child per family system.
- Red_Tarsius 9y ago> In the long run all that matters is culture. Genetics seems to play a key role in the development of culture and social structure. If you move 1M Mexicans in Tokyo, their offspring will not act like Japanese people do, regardless of the environment. They would exhibit different behavioral and voting patterns.
- panic 9y agoThat's not because of their genetics; it's because of a tendency for groups of people to reproduce their culture. If a family in Mexico City adopted a baby from Tokyo, the kid would become a part of Mexican culture, to the extent that the Mexican culture accepts people who don't look Mexican. They would not be a part of Japanese culture.
- Banthum 9y agoIt's both. Large groups of people carry characteristic sets of genes which drive behavioral patterns, as well as culture which also drives behavioral patterns. On a large scale, the differences between Japanese and Mexicans are driven by cultural and genetic differences. The degree, balance, and nature of those differences is complex and up for debate, of course. But to state that Japanese and Mexicans have no distinguishing behavior-driving genes at all even in the slightest degree is basically the left-wing version of young-Earth creationism.
- panic 9y agoOf course there are genes that affect behavior. I just don't think they're a major factor given how easily the children of immigrants can assimilate into cultures that are willing to accept them.
- jholman 9y agoDo we have any evidence at all that any of the behaviour differences between populations are genetic? I'm not well-educated in this area, but I'm aware of no such evidence. Educate me? As far as I can tell (again, in my relative ignorance), the assertion that "genetics seems to play a key role in the development of culture and social structure" is just as foolish and unsupported as the claim that you dismissed.
- virgilp 9y agoI wonder how the same "only one child" rule will work out for China, in the end. It might be the same, but given the wildly different scale (plus different times: more and more automation coming our way) - it might actually turn out very well for them.
- rumcajz 9y agoI recall I've read somewhere that the problem of finding a partner exists in China as well.
- gaius 9y agoChina is said to have 60M men who will never be able to marry. I wonder how that will play out.
- danieltillett 9y agoThey won’t get married. A interesting historical parallel is early Australia. Due to more men than women being shipped as convicts to Australia (something like 50:1), many women in Australia were rather reluctant to get married. Why get married and be under the power of your husband when you could live “in sin” and move on if your defacto husband was not up to scratch.
- virgilp 9y agoInteresting. What were the long-term effects of this? Did women get more rights/sooner, compared to other parts of the world? Or was it just "a phase" with little long-term impact?
- danieltillett 9y agoYes it did. Australian women were amongst the first in the world to get the right to vote (1901)[1]. 1. South Australia (now a state) was the first country in the world to allow women to vote (in the 1890s) although from memory New Zealand was the first “country" to allow women to vote - I should mention that NZ was as much as country at the time as South Australia (all were British dominions).
- jhiska 9y agoThey could have hired, and married, immigrants.
- rumcajz 9y agoThere was some immigration but it was insufficient to revert the trend. Maybe because the immigrants were mostly poor catholics and thus not very desirable partners.
- thriftwy 9y agoImmigrants usually have zero desire to go to remote, poor areas. Maybe at some point they did, but today they target large urban areas. That makes sense - if locals can't make use of a piece of land, recent immigrants will struggle even more.
- Bob2018 9y agoLegal ones who were vetted or just random people off the street?
- sgt101 9y agoThe differences to the current situation seem more interesting than the similarities. Now : - widespread easy access to contraception - low early life mortality - massive agricultural automation and machinery - pervasive educational opportunities
- ghostcluster 9y agoYou're missing the economic burden of extra children in modern urbanized settings, along with the rise of women in the workplace which further lowers fertility. As far as I can tell, this trend is global in every modern urban setting, some are just further along.
- fvdessen 9y agoThe Muslims in my city seem to have no problem raising large families in a urban environment despite having less financial resources than the other cultural groups, so the explanation cannot be entirely economic. Culture and religion seem to play a very important part
- thriftwy 9y agoThe thing is, in our culture it's no loger cool to dedicate your life to selling doner kebabs. Pur definition of success includes high skills and specialization. That produced the society that attracts immigrants and that can't be reproduced back where they came from. But it also puts high price tag on children.
- Bob2018 9y agoAlso family courts that punish providers in case of a divorce. Better play it safe and single.
- _1qd4 9y agoDivorce is a relatively new thing. You used to just work on your problems and stay together for the family. Family courts are the symptom not the problem. I think western society causes (or promotes?) a bit of hyper-individualism which makes cohabitation really difficult. We also have much easier access to alcohol, drugs, and gambling - aka “family destroyers”.
- ansible 9y agoI was so interested to read about a somewhat similar situation with the Shaker Church in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers The members took a vow of celibacy, and the church depended on new members joining. As of today, there are just two offical Shakers left, both quite old.
- danieltillett 9y agoThey did make some rather nice furniture.
- Retric 9y agoWithout immigration US is in the same boat as Japan with a falling population. Long term I suspect cultures with positive population growth to beat the competition, but that may take a long time.
- ido 9y agoFertility rates fall as countries get richer - it’s not a coincedense that poor countries have higher birth rates. The biggest drop in global population growth rate in the last 20 years came from massive drops in developing countries like India.
- zanethomas 9y agoImmigration is not required, what is required is for Americans to have more children. I did my part, I had three, now the rest of y'all need to quit paying for toys for yourselves and start paying for the future.
- pedrocr 9y agoWe actually need the exact opposite. Developed countries should keep having less children as each person in a developed country consumes much more of the planet's limited resources. Our best bet at having a livable planet in a hundred years is probably controlling population. Everything else gets driven by consumption demand.
- aidos 9y agoFascinating. How widespread was this?
- rumcajz 9y agoLooking at the map, the region is around 20x50 km.
- microtherion 9y agoI'm not convinced of either the facts or the narrative here. As to the facts, it does not look to me like Slovakia had particularly low fertility. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Slovakia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Slovakia "Half of all women born before 1930 had three or more children compared to one-third of Czech women of the same birth cohorts": https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol19/25/19-25.pdf https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol19/25/19-25.... As to the narrative, I've never heard of a society breeding itself into prosperity. In 2005, the 10 countries with the highest fertility in the world were: Niger, Mali, Somalia, Chad, Burundi, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, East Timor, and Angola. Bottom 10 on that list were: Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia, Malta, Portugal, South Korea, Singapore, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Hong Kong, and Macau. A somewhat mixed record of success, to be sure, but would any of them want to trade places with any country in the top 10? http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Health/Births-and-maternity/Total-fertility-rate http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Health/Births...
- watwut 9y agoHe is talking about one small region and protestant minority subculture in it.
- microtherion 9y agoSure, and you're welcome to dig up statistics from that region/subculture to substantiate OP's claims. Absent those, I remain skeptical that the demographics really different that much from the country as a whole.
- watwut 9y agoI guess that you are free to come to Slovakia and read the same archives and chronicles for that small region. The point is primary, that fertility statistics for whole Slovakia are useless here, because Slovakia is mostly Catholic. And they used to have big families, valued big families and having no or only one child would be a shame and sad for Catholic women. Author does not claim that Slovakia had low fertility, he claims that protestants were different and had culture of small families. So the stats you dug out are irrelevant.
- mellowdream 9y agohttps://jacobitemag.com/2017/06/20/modernitys-fertility-problem/ https://jacobitemag.com/2017/06/20/modernitys-fertility-prob... Nick Land's ideas at least marginally relevant to the OP as far as I can tell.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- golemotron 9y agoThis too: http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/20/the-return-of-patriarchy/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/20/the-return-of-patriarchy...
- choonway 9y agoTheir situation sounds very familiar here in Singapore, the country with the lowest fertility rate in the world.
- cheschire 9y agoWhich is interesting, as I've heard Singapore held up as an example of successful universal healthcare. I wonder what correlations there are between the two larger trends. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Singapore
- panic 9y agoIt's a neat story, but IMO the article doesn't do a good job linking this small subculture to modern society. Just because you see the same effect (low childbirth) doesn't mean the cause is the same, and it doesn't mean the outcome will be the same.
- nabla9 9y agoWas there an attempt in the article to link this subculture to modern society?
- vages 9y ago«It was so weirdly (but not entirely) reminiscent of some of the problems that developed societies are facing today that I'll try to recount the story in English to make it available to wider audience.»
- alexasmyths 9y agoWell, we are seeing a hollowing out of many rural communities in the US, there's an analogy there.
- brudgers 9y agoTractors. When my wife's grandfather was born in the early 20th century a family farm in north central Iowa was limited to about 160 acres or a 1/4 section. So each section could have four family farms and a Township with ~50% agricultural utilization might have 300 farm families in the township and some people living in town. That's about a 1000 people. Today a family farm there is about 1200 acres. That's 1/7 the rural density. The economic catchment for the town no longer has enough customers to support the businesses it once did...and that all happened before Amazon and UPS and Walmart thirty miles away and Costco up in Minneapolis and cars got faster and safer and roads got better.
- vasco 9y agoIt's not up to the author to do the thinking for you. Sometimes presenting a story is all that is needed, the rest being left as an exercise to the reader. Not everything needs to be BuzzFeed.
- erasemus 9y agoWow that's well below replacement fertility. Also dysgenic since intelligent and responsible people are more likely to follow the moral fad. For me it demonstrates the importance of obeying my conscience and not caring what neighbours and other people might say. It's easier for me to do that nowadays since I'm not dependent on a local network of reciprocal favours in order to survive. But still I wonder how many neighbouring families both secretly wanted another child but were each afraid what the other might think.
- ImSkeptical 9y agoIt's not a moral fad at all. Women, including highly educated women, typically prefer having more children than they have [1]. 60% of women in the EU say they have less than the ideal number children. Women all over the world want more children than the replacement rate (makes sense) and in the developed world they have fewer children than this. The reason women have fewer children nowadays is because of women's liberation - specifically in terms of education and professions. Working and studying requires time and dedication, and that conflicts with having and raising a child. I don't really know how to solve this problem other than force women to choose between careers and children as they currently do. The best thing I can think of is subsidizing child care, trying to get more jobs that can support a family (so one parent can work and one can child raise), better maternity and paternity leave, and maybe making it more common to take a year or two off around 18 to 20. 1 - http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/11/birth-rates-lag-in-europe-and-the-u-s-but-the-desire-for-kids-does-not/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/11/birth-rates-...
- erasemus 9y agoThe 'moral fad' I was referring to was what took place in protestant Slovakia beginning in the 1800s, not about human fertility/fecundity today. From the article: >In XIX. century the trend of having a single child took hold among protestants of the historical regions of Novohrad, Hont, Malohont and Gemer. >it seems that if you had multiple kids back then you've got criticized and laughed at by your friends and neighbors.
- slv77 9y ago
- stefs 9y agoi wonder if it would have been possible for single families to exploit the "one child" culture later on by having a lot of children, thus providing much needed brides and grooms and profiting from the wealth gained by marriage. sure, this would have been a long-term investment and might have lowered you social standing in the beginning, but there'd also be pressure for the others to marry your kid to other protestants (even if those are less wealthy) than to outside catholics.
- freeflight 9y agoIt feels like there's an angle missing to that story. One has to assume there was a reason for that much agriculture being there in the first place and a reason why it suddenly wasn't in such a high demand anymore, it can't just all be "lack of labor" because then people would probably have starved due to the lack of agricultural products being available.
- reggieband 9y agoI agree, my feeling reading this was "this is more anecdote than history". It feels a bit like the facts fit a pre-defined narrative.
- azernik 9y agoBy this point agricultural goods were traded in an international market - wheat was traded overseas, for example. People didn't starve, the global price just went slightly up.
- rumcajz 9y agoWhat I've heard from my grandfather (referring to a close-by region in 1930's) was that the local pub owner ordered 12 bottles of beer each year, on Christmas. It was bought by wealthier villagers as a kind of Christmas treat. The point being that any non-locally-produced food was basically a luxury item even decades after the period in question.
- chrighenndeter 9y agoThe thirties may not be the most representative time for this.
- mabbo 9y agoIt's not just lack of labor, but lack of profit. Farm efficiency has increased incredibly in the last 200 years. People tend to forget that in 1850, a huge proportion of the population were farmers. Today it's down around 1%. Consider the implications though: each farm may become more efficient, but that increases the food supply, lowering the food price. Then you add in a shrinking population, lowering demand, lowering the price further. Sure, for the right price you could hire labor for your farm, but then you'd lose money on every sale. It's not lack of labor so much as lack of labor at prices you can afford. And this is happening today. A friend of mine is from a large farm family in southern Kentucky. Grain prices are getting so low because of high yields that even with the best technology on hand they can barely make a profit. This is great for consumers (cheap food) but short term fluctuations put smaller farming operations at serious risk. So to answer your initial question of why there was so much agriculture to begin with: it was required to feed the population.
- purplezooey 9y agoSome questionable assertions here. "Sexual abstinence brought in the familiar zoo of weird behaviors, ranging from coitus interruptus to having sex with animals." Uh yeah.
- davidf18 9y agoIn Orthodox (traditional) Judaism, which was the only Judaism until about 2 centuries ago, according to Jewish Law, men are obligated through a "commandment" (lit. "mitzvah") to "have as many children as possible" but the very minimum is "replacement which is a boy and a girl." (and not 2) so that if the man has only boys he has to keep having children until he has a girl. Women were not obligated to have children, perhaps because the risks of childbirth could be very high up until the times of modern medicine. Typically in Europe Jews were not allowed to own land. They created wealth not through land but through trades. Thus the agrarian concepts of wealth -- having enough land to grow food -- did not apply.
- Parcissons 9y agoIf i want everyone else to limit himself in ressource consumption, want myself to face no such limits and want to escape any harassment and responsiblity for the limitation i inflicted, what ideology does everyone recommend?