Normies (us) are making parenting more untenable every year.
My parents (and their gen) parented some hours a week.
My kids required 24/7 adulting. Free-ranging was eradicated by
car culture and trespassing culture. Adult-free peer time
- where critical social and personal growth happened -
was replaced with a series adult-curated, adult-populated boxes.
Kids spend their days moving from one box to the next.
Compounding the above is the difficulty/impossibility for a
modern couple to fully support themselves on two typical wages.
Add on top of that the disappearance of shopping malls, arcade centers and other "third places". The game arcades went during my parents' generation. My generation, we had electronics stores that had game consoles where one could play some car race game or whatnot against a friend. Today's youth? They got to deal with "mosquito youth repellent".
Which was probably true, but the drug fear mongering was another big piece of making sure kids didn't have anywhere they were allowed to exist without adult supervision.
Perhaps the lack of an external threat or insufficient motivation vs. failure leads to a lack of focus? Certainly, helicoptering does horrible things to the younger participants. Might that see-saw from generation to generation, or have we not seen those participants becoming parents yet?
I recall "good luck, we'll do all we can do to help you. F*ck up, and you're on your own...".
Looking back, there is/was only one great difference - social networks. I played with computers from 13 onwards. Required going to a computer centre somewhere or finding a desktop minicomputer. In a car or on foot, but it was "elsewhere". The big advantage of that era is that it wasn't a solo activity. Weird society, yeah, but one had to be civil (enough) to be able to get help and access. Micro's ended that need.
Not having to be on line all the time gave me some slack until I got a handle on scheduling. In that I was (quite) lucky.
And I figure "joining the military" isn't freeing oneselves from supervision, rather the reverse. Is there still social agencies that let you go elsewhere and help out or have they all been branded NGO's and eliminated?
No easy answer. If you want kids maybe not think about it so much and just yolo it. For my wife and I we didn’t really want kids in he first place and we’re much better off for it.
And that's the crux of the issue: Individuals in most western societies are currently better off not having children, while society as a whole absolutely needs individuals to have a certain amount of children or run into serious issues down the line.
Many societies (for example South Korea) are feeling this more and more. Way too many old people and not enough young to run the country and take care of the old. In those places not enough is being done supporting those who chose to have children for everyone's sake.
Foregoing children and having saved for retirement does not mean much if in 40 years you're competing for the now extremely limited basic services against people who are in the same boat. Worse, young people may now decide that they don't feel like feeding and providing for a large population of old people through sky-high taxes and being the victim of rent-seeking. They just might throw in the towel and leave for a more functional country, using their now higher income to support their own parents, but none of the others. Who now takes care of the childless?
It's going to be human misery on a scale you would expect to see in a modern society.
Who is going to pay for other people's kids?
Opportunity cost of a kid for the parents is currently around $500,000.
Subsidizing babies with three zeros has no effect.
Most people I know with higher degrees don’t have children even though they have the means to support them.
Same here. As someone middle-aged and thus far childless, I've been thinking that "just do it" would've been the way, maybe starting as soon as a couple years after graduation.
An exception might be career planning for the woman who'd be carrying, in some career tracks.
Other than that, even the US has various ways that young parents are supported, and there are safety nets.
While one is waiting for the perfect timing, maybe partly because one's parents didn't, most other people are busy having babies in circumstances no more ideal than one's own.
Quite. The fertility rate is plummeting worldwide. I'd suggest these 'Efilists' visit South Korea to get their fix of low fertility. Even the nice Scandinavian countries are struggling to get their fertility rates anywhere near replacement—they are all at around 1.4 to 1.5 children per woman.
At this rate we will erase ourselves in about 200 years.
Not at all. Two hundred years is, what, 8 generations? (1.5/2)^8 = 0.1. We'd have a tenth the population in 200 years, so 800 million people. That may erase modern civilization, but it won't erase us.
Hang on let me check how much horse manure london is covered with rn and get back to you.
Many studies have consistently revised and brought forward their 'peak population' estimates over the past two decades. In 2000, the estimate was around twelve billion by 2150. In 2025, whether humanity will reach even ten billion by 2075 is in question. It is highly expected that many sub-Saharan countries will reach replacement rate by the mid-century. China's population has already started falling. Many Indian states are below replacement. Nigeria—a good proxy for the rest of Africa—was expected to reach ~900 million by 2100 in 2012; in 2024, that estimate was essentially halved.
There is a strong correlation between education levels and emancipation (especially for girls and women), improved sanitation and health care (which means easier access to contraceptives), and fertility rate. This is what drove the fertility rate collapse in the post-war period for much of the West and East Asia.
Further reductions are a result of worse work-life balance (in the case of the 'Asian tigers'), a desire to enjoy one's freedom in young adulthood (coupled with a desire to 'stick it to society'), a lack of 'a village to raise a child' in urban lifestyles, and more.
You may eventually find that the normies dwindle and begin to die out, while the non-normies grow and spread and spread – those non-normies may eventually become the new normies
If true, it would suggest a future where the world is much more religious, or a world that somehow deindustrialized.
This needs to be repeated early and repeated often no matter what non-abnormal ideology you subscribe to. In as many words.
If you consider yourself a kind, decent & some what enlightened person and you do not procreate, in all likelihood the unkind or less kind people will do the procreating on your behalf. Mind you I did not even use the word tolerant which implies some measure of altruism; I'm merely saying kind & decent.
I do not know why people much older than us do not repeat this mantra more often.
I do not understand what could belie such intransigence.
What is so offensive about saying that line?
Say it early say it often.
I don’t see this as meaning ultra-traditionalists are bound to inherit- I think it’s more likely the discourse would revert to the mean, aka the centrists.
But it also applies at the national level. If country A consistently makes having kids miserable, then in the long arc of time, the way of life in country B (which makes family life great) will win out.
They are outliers. One-offs. Selected out within generation. Where's the "normy-ism" in that?
It just don't even make sense.
Birth rates are plummeting and most people are far more passionate arguing reasons to not have children than the opposite.
It’s striking that birth rates are plummeting globally across very different cultures.
It may be the reasons are completely different in different places, despite it happening everywhere all at once.
Or there could be common causes that are at work all over the world.
The reason people don't have children - most of them anyway - have nothing to do with antinatalism.
Having children simply would be a massive, major inconvienience, and would negatively affect their quality of life, income, expenses, career prospects, housing, etc, etc.
Ie. their decision making for having children and not having them is exactly the same. I want to, I don't want to (inconvenience, etc), there's no deeper reasoning behind it in most cases.
Plummeting birth rates have little to do with antinatalism, and is a self-correcting problem. It will - without doubt - self correct. You just might not see the change in your lifetime.
Yet looking back, history doesn’t match this narrative. I’ve worked with younger people who get ideas from Reddit that everyone in the mid 1900s was living in giant houses and living a life of luxury on the income of a mailman (literally a meme that circulates on Twitter and Reddit). They all seem confused when I explain how my grandfather on one side had to work two full-time jobs, one of which was in a mine. My other grandfather operated a farm and still had to get jobs to make ends meet. Their kids slept 2-4 to a room in small houses. They worked hard and struggled. Kids were getting jobs in their teenage years to make ends meet at the house. The list of counter-examples goes on and on, but they just won’t believe it. They’ve been so convinced by the internet that the modern world is uniquely bad and history was easy mode for raising kids.
I think the weird internet communities discussed in this article are just an extreme version of this type of distortion: They gather together to reinforce some narrative, downvoting or banning the nonbelievers while rewarding those who amplify the message with upvotes, praise, and a sense of belonging. It’s scary stuff.
Intelligence is a unique spark within a cold and presumably dead universe. We should be trying to awaken the universe itself.
We should be trying to extend human lifespans within the parameters of sustainability. We should be trying to extend our species beyond death and mortality and this single planet.
If we master physics, we should reverse the light cone and bring back everyone who has ever lived [1].
We should turn every atom in the universe into us.
And then we can try to prevent the death of the universe. Or build a new one. Or several.
[1] "Down to what level?", you ask. "Beloved pets that died?" I should think even the ants. Bacteria. If we're gods, then why not?
That's what I mean by dead. We aren't even alive yet. We're bacteria.
Nothing personal.
> [Cosmism] is characterized by the belief in humanity’s cosmic destiny, the potential for immortality, and the use of scientific and technological advancements to achieve control over nature and explore space [Wikipedia, 1].
> Cosmism, specifically Russian Cosmism, is a philosophical and cultural movement that emerged in 19th and early 20th century Russia. It's characterized by its focus on the cosmos, humanity's relationship with it, and a belief in the possibility of humanity actively shaping its own destiny and the destiny of the cosmos through technological progress and spiritual transformation. [Google Gemini]
This is so much richer than efilism, nihilism, anti-natalism, and the rest of the misery lot.
This philosophy is a transhumanist, solarpunk ideal, full of infinite adventure.
I am struck by the difference in tone (and militarism) between that early-Internet-era, un-self-serious, strident-but-just-an-argument venture and these new forms of atheist death cults.
I wonder how much of that is down to shifting cultural norms and how much has to do with the way digital platforms foment extremism at a structural level.
Most people don't think this way, but it is very much consistent with their views.
When will Reddit be held accountable for encouraging violent rhetoric?
No other major social media network gets the free pass Reddit seems to get.
It's not hard to go to, say, r/Politics or AdviceAnimals and find people encouraging political violence.
Mostly contained to the most popular subreddits thankfully, the small subreddits focused on niche topics thankfully stay on topic.
There’s also a facet of strict benthamite utilitarianism that falls into the trap of accepting reified societal norms as being objective reality - for instance, the core idea that pain and suffering are bad.
On an individual level, I would hold that they are the whetstones that sharpen the soul - through crushing trauma we grow, and find new meaning, and experience “goods” in our existence hitherto unobserved or unappreciated for their nature.
In a societal level, they are an essential facet of empathy, and the ability to build cohesive societies.
There’s a commonality in popular philosophies in that they attempt to provide a universal framework, an imperative system of being - yet they almost inevitably lean on inherited dispositions and concepts with only selective examination of their foundations. This results in a tendency to either say that everything matters, or nothing matters. It’s hard for me to see much of a distinction between much of the large schools of philosophy and religion.
Like with so many things, the truth, if indeed there is such a thing, lies in a murky middle ground, and is in the eye of the beholder.
I suppose baudrillard, to my mind, has come the closest to explaining where we are, without attempting to systemise a way of being.
Anyway. This kind of thing has happened, happens, and will happen, as long as there are humans to have ideas, and language to promulgate them. Fatalistic, perhaps, but manuscripts don’t burn - they just metastasise.
Man, people DO vax poetic online, but when you introduce them to the blowtorch, some tweezers and a steel pipe, they don't need much convincing that pain and suffering is ... in fact ... objectively bad.
They convert to recognizing the badness of pain and suffering..... very, very quickly.
> I would hold that they are the whetstones that sharpen the soul
You really have no idea what you're talking about, are you? How can anyone type this naive drivel?
I would like anesthesia for surgery, but I still participate in endurance sports…
WarOnPrivacy•3h ago