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Agreed. It took most of human history to build the old culture with immense social pressure to marry and have children, immense social pressure for men to provi

Agreed. It took most of human history to build the old culture with immense social pressure to marry and have children, immense social pressure for men to provide and women to care for children, and intense taboos around divorce, births out of wedlock, even around non-marriage into old age That world is gone, and probably for the better in many ways. The world needs to find different cultural norms around children such that we can have a stable population and happy children. For most of human history, raising a family was not really a choice, culturally speaking, it was a mandate. Currently we’ve gone the other direction, and raising a family is a lifestyle decision like hiking the Appalachian trail, and partway through your partner may decide it is not for them. From a freedom perspective this is ok but socially I think this is precarious. We’ve given up our stable optimum of centuries and clearly not yet found a new one.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
> The world needs to find different cultural norms around children such that we can have a stable population and happy children. Unfortunately, the world is dead. It can play around with cultural norms as if they are toys for whatever time it has left, but the diagnosis is terminal. You don't have enough children, all of you, the fertility rate is below replacement and it is not a blip or a fluke. Children who grow up in your world are discouraged from even liking the idea of having children of their own some day. They grow up hearing all the same dumb jokes on sitcoms about how horrible it is to get married, to be pregnant, to raise children. The internalize it, and the next generation is smaller than the last. This isn't reversible. > For most of human history, raising a family was not really a choice, culturally speaking Only because if it was a choice, then you wouldn't be here to casually quip about "human history". A humanity that doesn't raise families has no future, there can be no one a thousand years from now to talk about past history. Organisms that do not reproduce become extinct. It's been hardwired into our biology since day one. Talking about it as if it were some choice is bizarre and indicative of a lack of self-comprehension. Might as well talk about not having a choice in whether you breathe or eat. The same people who talk about dangerous and virulent memes, the so-called "disinformation" are no more immune than those who wallow in the things. > We’ve given up our stable optimum of centuries and clearly not yet found a new one. Good news. You still have -30 years to find one.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > You don't have enough children, all of you, the fertility rate is below replacement and it is not a blip or a fluke. How is the population still growing by almost 1% per year then? https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/population https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/population
  - NeoTar 3y ago
    Because there is a population 'bulge' of younger people who haven't yet had children. For a very simplified model, imagine at t=0 there were only 'x' people all of whom were twenty-years-old. Run time forward to t=20 - some of the twenty-year-olds will have died, so the surviving population will be maybe 0.95x, but also some will have had kids, let's say the fertility rate is 1.0 children per woman, so the group as a whole will have had roughly 0.25x children. This means the population has grown to 1.2x despite lower than replacement fertility.
- helen___keller 3y ago
  The pessimism is unwarranted. As you glibly point out, we have survivorship bias in discussing the history of those who survived and reproduced. So shall it be one hundred or thousand years from now, discussing the rise of whatever culture or cult succeeds in keeping their sub populations fertility rate above the replacement rate.
- ryanwaggoner 3y ago
  Humanity will be just fine. There are eight billion of us and growing, and while fertility dropping is increasingly a localized economic issue, it hardly threatens our species survival. Even when population peaks (projected in a few decades), there will be billions of us for centuries to come. And it’s impossible for you or anyone else to predict how civilization and culture will change or grow over such timeframes. Imagine someone in 1623 wringing their hands over humanity’s downfall based on whatever was happening in their tiny corner of time and space.
iteratethis 3y ago
You're saying goodbye to the old way too soon, and I'm not talking about the bad parts. I'm talking about the roles. Even in the most advanced progressive societies women continue to select for male providers (marry up) whilst they continue to do more care-related tasks. In other words, gendered roles continue to exist. None of which should be shocking because the idea that it's 100% a construct and men and women are entirely egalitarian is an academic fantasy not rooted in anything.
- helen___keller 3y ago
  Maybe you’re misreading my post. I’m not making a judgment on whether gendered roles are inferior or superior. I’m saying that a number of societal taboos that generally prevented women from accessing economic freedom, no longer exist You will not be shunned for being a spinster You will not be shunned for divorce You will not be shamed for failing to have a baby for your husband. And so on Short of making these things illegal, we can’t just magically revive long-gone taboos, even if one thinks we should. Consequently, their absence should be assumed. Hence my statement “we need new cultural norms” - a way to encourage the formation of healthy and successful family units without relying on the shame of spinsterism/divorce

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

> The world needs to find different cultural norms around children such that we can have a stable population and happy children. Unfortunately, the world is dead. It can play around with cultural norms as if they are toys for whatever time it has left, but the diagnosis is terminal. You don't have enough children, all of you, the fertility rate is below replacement and it is not a blip or a fluke. Children who grow up in your world are discouraged from even liking the idea of having children of their own some day. They grow up hearing all the same dumb jokes on sitcoms about how horrible it is to get married, to be pregnant, to raise children. The internalize it, and the next generation is smaller than the last. This isn't reversible. > For most of human history, raising a family was not really a choice, culturally speaking Only because if it was a choice, then you wouldn't be here to casually quip about "human history". A humanity that doesn't raise families has no future, there can be no one a thousand years from now to talk about past history. Organisms that do not reproduce become extinct. It's been hardwired into our biology since day one. Talking about it as if it were some choice is bizarre and indicative of a lack of self-comprehension. Might as well talk about not having a choice in whether you breathe or eat. The same people who talk about dangerous and virulent memes, the so-called "disinformation" are no more immune than those who wallow in the things. > We’ve given up our stable optimum of centuries and clearly not yet found a new one. Good news. You still have -30 years to find one.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sokoloff 3y ago
> You don't have enough children, all of you, the fertility rate is below replacement and it is not a blip or a fluke. How is the population still growing by almost 1% per year then? https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/population https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/population
- NeoTar 3y ago
  Because there is a population 'bulge' of younger people who haven't yet had children. For a very simplified model, imagine at t=0 there were only 'x' people all of whom were twenty-years-old. Run time forward to t=20 - some of the twenty-year-olds will have died, so the surviving population will be maybe 0.95x, but also some will have had kids, let's say the fertility rate is 1.0 children per woman, so the group as a whole will have had roughly 0.25x children. This means the population has grown to 1.2x despite lower than replacement fertility.
helen___keller 3y ago
The pessimism is unwarranted. As you glibly point out, we have survivorship bias in discussing the history of those who survived and reproduced. So shall it be one hundred or thousand years from now, discussing the rise of whatever culture or cult succeeds in keeping their sub populations fertility rate above the replacement rate.
ryanwaggoner 3y ago
Humanity will be just fine. There are eight billion of us and growing, and while fertility dropping is increasingly a localized economic issue, it hardly threatens our species survival. Even when population peaks (projected in a few decades), there will be billions of us for centuries to come. And it’s impossible for you or anyone else to predict how civilization and culture will change or grow over such timeframes. Imagine someone in 1623 wringing their hands over humanity’s downfall based on whatever was happening in their tiny corner of time and space.

iteratethis 3y ago

You're saying goodbye to the old way too soon, and I'm not talking about the bad parts. I'm talking about the roles. Even in the most advanced progressive societies women continue to select for male providers (marry up) whilst they continue to do more care-related tasks. In other words, gendered roles continue to exist. None of which should be shocking because the idea that it's 100% a construct and men and women are entirely egalitarian is an academic fantasy not rooted in anything.

helen___keller 3y ago
Maybe you’re misreading my post. I’m not making a judgment on whether gendered roles are inferior or superior. I’m saying that a number of societal taboos that generally prevented women from accessing economic freedom, no longer exist You will not be shunned for being a spinster You will not be shunned for divorce You will not be shamed for failing to have a baby for your husband. And so on Short of making these things illegal, we can’t just magically revive long-gone taboos, even if one thinks we should. Consequently, their absence should be assumed. Hence my statement “we need new cultural norms” - a way to encourage the formation of healthy and successful family units without relying on the shame of spinsterism/divorce