When I recently wrote about the severe and increasing subfertility of the populations of all developed societies in the world; I had not realized that this was becoming a topic in the mass media...
Sort of.
Because the discussions reveal that people have not even begun to consider the implications of subfertility.
The implications of subfertility go way beyond the currently permissible discussions of human psychology, sociology, and economics - the true implications are biological, they affect people as functional and reproductive beings.
Fertility is a big topic, much too big to summarize here; and it takes a fair while to think-through - but the subject has been (I think) well understood by some people for some decades; and some outcomes of differential- and sub-fertility are (I believe) baked-in and highly predictable.
Differences in average fertility is natural selection of human beings; and such differentials Just Are evolution in action.
Subfertility is extinction - but a subfertile population suffers massive declines in functionality, long before the actual extinction - although of course this will also accelerate the extinction.
I don't talk much about all this stuff, because people don't like to talk about it - and are enmeshed in their own feelings and their need for optimism in order to escape what would otherwise be despair.
Because those addicted to optimism do not want to know that the damage is largely done, and we are just awaiting for the implications to unfold. There is little that anybody can do about it - not least because nobody really wants to do anything about it.
So much so, that the only reason to think about the subject at all, is if you really want to understand what is happening, and what will happen to human beings as biological creatures.
And not may want to understand stuff, for its own sake.
What do you mean by the comment that that the subfertile "suffers massive declines in functionality"? Expand briefly on that if you will.
ReplyDelete@js - https://mouseutopia.blogspot.com/ - plus look through the linked posts.
ReplyDeleteI read through your materials on this topic a few years back. The conclusions are grim, and all I could think to do in response is trust that God will amplify supernaturally any genuine efforts to be fruitful and multiply.
ReplyDeleteJust the Genius Famine stuff is scary enough to contemplate. I don’t recall that book discussing genius and birth order (sorry if it did, I think I read that in 2020), but I’ve noticed in the biographies we cover in homeschooling how very common it seems for geniuses to be very far down in birth order even of surviving children. Mozart was a 7th, his composer son a 6th, Bach was what, 9th? his composer sons weren’t the eldest of his 20 children either; Aquinas a 4th surviving son also with older sisters. Or forget genius and look at notable, it’s common there also, like Jefferson Davis was an 8th child. Having 6 children is shorthand in Victorian literature for being happily married. Despite my years at the conservative evangelical church and my tendency to attract Mormons, I can count the families I’ve met with 6+ kids on one hand. The usual attitude if the first child turns out smart is to *stop* having kids! And I don’t believe “reliable birth control” really explains it since less reliable birth control forms were common enough that the early church fathers address them.
All explanations fall flat that don’t account for the radically different resilience of historical people. Constanze Mozart lost 5 children in infancy during her relatively short marriage to Mozart yet still described her marriage as “perfectly happy.” If the standard of mental health is functionality, then no one today is mentally healthy compared to that!
@Mia - A thoughtful comment.
ReplyDeleteI tend to think that - with such matters - we should be able to make an honest evaluation of reality, and acknowledge the truth to the best of our ability, and that is our responsibility. I don't think that individuals can, or should try to, address or solve such general problems.
Your comment about how very differently people in the past thought and behaved is important. And there were also large individual differences, as now - and as would be expected. e.g. back in the early 1800s RW Emerson's wife never recovered from the death of a particular one of her children (Waldo) at age five.
We cannot, and should not try to, sort out most of the big problems of life by using generic analysis and abstract formulae ("policies", "plans" etc); but we should work on our own specific (me, here, now) discernments as a guide to action.
It should be a great liberation for Christians that our hope is based on Heaven after death - so we are not required to believe in the possibility/ probability of Heaven on earth.
@Bruce,
ReplyDeletehave you written on the spiritual implications of this?
@Laeth - The main spiritual implication is as a civilizational symptom.
ReplyDelete@Bruce, i meant from the other side. individuals as pre incarnate spirits. and also how it ties to changes in consciousness.
ReplyDelete@Laeth - I don't think any general answer is possible.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine traced her genealogy and found an ancestor named Jonathan. He was the seventh and only surviving child of that mother, and she had named every one of her babies “Jonathan” with a different spelling until she ran out of ways to spell it and recycled the normal spelling for #7.
ReplyDelete