People are apparently unable to grasp the very simple fact that the "subfertility*" of all the populations of all the developed nations is a strategic choice of biological extinction.
The peoples of the modern world are willing their own annihilation.
Of course, the averaged population choice in favour of death is composed of multi-millions of individual choices - which have, presumably, thousands of specific reasons and motivations.
Nonetheless, if we are talking at a population level, in terms of group averages of reproduction - then the deep psychological (indeed spiritual) problem; is that the population has chosen its own destruction.
At every level from the family, through the tribe, clan, nation - religion, or ideology.
This seems to me a far more significant fact than real-but-temporary issues such as an ageing population. It is very solid, biological, evidence of the short-termism and self-focus characteristic of all modern populations.
This is, in itself, a product of the changes in human consciousness that have happened everywhere - which could be described as alienation, or as the autonomous consciousness.
In the past, people felt themselves part of a group-consciousness. Much of behaviour was unconscious, automatic, and flowed-into each person from the group-mind.
The group-mind could be resisted, but such resistance need to be active.
Individuals did not therefore consciously "decide" to have "at least three children" (e.g. weighing the options, calculating the risks and benefits) - instead it was not experienced as a choice, certainly not an individual choice.
Wanting children was just "what people did"; and "I" am "people"... so I want it too.
Modern consciousness doesn't work like that.
We modern live "inside our heads" - looking-out.
We often pretend to be concerned about other-people-in-general and in-the-long-term; but endemic subfertility shows that we don't genuinely and powerfully experience such oft-expressed care and concern.
Ultimately, we don't care about the extinction of our kind; and we don't care so deeply that we cannot even notice or acknowledge that it is happening!
If we don't care about the extinction of our people - And We Don't! - then all the other altruistic and planetary concerns are revealed as puffs of wind!
This relates to the currently so-evident "wars and rumours of war" - which are also symptomatic of the same underlying spirit**. These wars, and their gratuitous and gleefully spiteful nature, are a consequence of profound facts of human spirituality - here-and-now.
To be clear - I am not suggesting that we "ought" to be less selfish, more long-termist, more group-minded: the reality of our situation is that these are impossibilities.
We can in theory ask for them, recommend them, incentivize them - but because people do not want them, they will not happen - just as all attempts, everywhere, to reverse subfertility have utterly failed (but mostly, they are not even attempted).
These are facts of the human condition in this earthly mortal existence.
Sins are fact - they cannot be evaded; but that does not free us from the responsibility to acknowledge and repent them.
Why do we find it so difficult - impossible, even - to acknowledge and repent facts which will not be changed? Usually because we do not fundamentally desire to change the facts; or if part of us does want to change - we cannot make ourselves do it.
Why are we so eager to pretend these are soluble problems, why expend such energy in evasions?
Surely this intractability of mortal Life is at the very heart of Jesus's message, and the reason for his great gift (or offer) of salvation?
What we need to do is something that we think is "too easy" or "not worth" doing...
Therefore we do not do what actually-is needful, and possible for everybody - and thereby reject salvation.
*Anything less than two-point-something children per woman, on average. The point-something is (approximately) to account for children that do not survive to adulthood, or are otherwise infertile. Biologically speaking, it is very probably necessary to have considerably more than an average of two children per woman to replace the human population - if significant and cumulative genetic damage is to be avoided.
**The world is breaking down. When that happens the structures of civilisation develop cracks and start to fail after which the normal forces of entropy and decay take over and do the rest.
Recent wars are the result of a loss of centre. The centre is the spiritual focus of a society, what it is grounded in and what sustains it. When that no longer holds then things do fly apart, as the poet says.
We have had no centre for a long time in the West which is why we have pitiful replacements such as human rights and democracy but these have no real substance to them. They are feeble ideological substitutes for what we have lost or rejected and they don't really inspire anybody for long.
Wars come about because of ambition, and that is certainly a factor with the present one. But there is something else going on which is a simple desire for destruction.
When the world has no meaning, and it has none without a sense of something beyond itself, we can find a crude purpose of sorts through destruction. Destruction is easy and it's exciting. It can stimulate the jaded palate and thrill the mind that has become bored and without a deeper goal.
From William Wildblood
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