One of the most frustrating and obfuscated topics that can be discussed is population and demographics. This is due to the mainstream public’s view on this issue seeming to be both very well sculpted and going completely unquestioned. Generally, even people who are supposedly Conservative and even Religious are sure that the “world is overpopulated” and that humanity at the very least needs to be somewhat downsized. Eugenics has sadly come full circle and come for us as a whole apparently. But there are many people out there who believe that having their kind of folk, whoever they may be, should continue on into the future and multiply fruitfully. This article is for those who see dwindling populations as a bad thing for the future of humanity. Some new statistics confirm the least spoken of solution for demographic decline that I have been screaming about for the last decade. There is hope, if at the very least for my sanity.

Pew Research has conducted polling over several years that shows that the problem of demographics being faced by (ironically) the wealthiest countries on Earth is ideological in nature and that the excuses most people make as to not having any children are inauthentic and I can prove they are invalid. But more importantly, they are a minority opinion. Most simply do not know why they are demotivated from doing the most natural biological function of any being – reproduction.

Firstly, we cannot forget that any polling in regards to the motivation of human beings has to be taken with a grain of salt. We are emotional animals and our subconscious mind, instincts and base desires weigh heavily on our decision making. If asked why we buy Coke over Pepsi we are unlikely to say that it has to do with the can being red, even though 60% of our purchasing decisions are based on something as seemingly meaningless as color. However, before we get to the specific stated motivations of the respondents we need to take a look at the blanket answer to the question of “will Americans choose to have children?”.

Roughly speaking, as you see in the graphic above, half of adults with no children have no desire to bear any offspring and the overwhelming majority of those that have at least one child are not planning to have any more. This is the big demographic downward spiral in pure numbers that we have all seen happening in front of our faces. But the question is why would any group of humans voluntarily desire to go extinct. When you have half of your population making zero children, and 2/3 of those with one kid calling it quits, your society is going to die out, shouldn’t the instincts to survive kick in at some point? Why is this happening?

The reason is ideological. We live in a society that is both Liberal (believes the individual is sacred) and highly Secular (there is no group or divine pressure to tell us what to do). Essentially, we have lived under Liberalism so long that it is hard to imagine an existence that is anything other than “self-centric”. Although brilliant men built the ideology of America in the late 1700s, they could not have predicted that over many generations their heroic Enlightenment values, praising the rights and sanctity of the individual, would turn into an excuse for Hedonism on a scale unseen in human history. If the individual is all that matters, why not live life for one’s own pleasure? In our Postmodern society, no one owes anyone anything, so why burden yourself with the ultimate buzzkill – children? Plus, the Seven Deadly Sins are a lot of fun!

Speaking of which, the decline of Religion only furthers the tendency of Hedonism that is created by Liberalism. When there is no community or God to tell us what we should and should not do, we again default back to Hedonism. The old joke “It’s easy to become a Catholic, if something feels good – don’t do it” remains very true, the problem is that without someone in the sky to tell us to keep our desires and instincts in check we all want to live lives of gluttony and pleasure, so now we live by the logic that “if it feels good… yeah just do it” and initially taking care of others and making sacrifices for our progeny feels very painful to our blackened Liberal hearts that so desperately want weed, pizza and Welfare.

Children require a lot of effort, especially to raise properly, as in not bearing them for the heck of it, then dumping them off at day care to be raised by paid randos. The idea of parenthood, of putting effort into creating more people at great expense and energy for the future of society/humanity is directly at odds with Liberalism + Secularism. In fact, you can see it dripping from the answers as to why the childless want to remain so. Let’s take a look at their responses and make some suppositions as to what they actually mean.

• 56% Just Don’t Want to Have Children
  This could be most simply translated as raw Hedonism – “I live for myself and I don’t owe anyone anything”. This is the shortsighted view that somehow the pittance that Social Security provides will replace the loving help of children in old age. It is a shame that we do not tell the population that the best insurance policy is a close-knit family. All-State and Geico have some lovely commercials but the help of a loyal relative far outweighs their copay plans. People in the past understood that they needed each other and that interdependence was a normal part of society. The Liberal arrogance that teaches us that we as individuals “can do it all” and that we “don’t need anyone” blinds us from the need to have a family and children, especially when we do not recognize our obvious dependence on the State.
• 19% Medical Reasons
  This is a legitimate reason to pass on children. Although some may be overinflating the risk as an excuse.
• 17% Financial Reasons
  The idea that one needs a lot of money to have children is another piece of cursed logic stemming from the average American’s complete lack of knowledge of history. For centuries, humanity, living in cramped quarters, at the risk of death from childbirth, with very limited resources, and zero guarantees that a baby would make it to adulthood, fought to create progeny that would go on into the future. Conditions in the past were awful, life was “brutish and short” and yet there were plenty of children around. If any time was a good time to have kids it would be now, homo sapiens are the richest they have ever been!But even if you are at the bottom of society living in a trailer park or the ghetto with little hope of escape, that is still no reason to not have children. Roughly speaking, about 1.5 out of 10,000 people commit suicide, meaning that the absolute majority of us would rather exist, even in shocking poverty, even in dire suffering, than take their own life. Not being able to buy a child a PS5 is no reason not to bring them into the world as 99.9%+ of us want to live regardless of our problems.
• 15% No Partner

Liberalism can be freeing, but it can also be isolating. The idea that a society is best made up of completely atomized individuals is flawed logic. We often blame technology for the rise of the “Incel Community” and the death of the family but systemic Liberalism and extreme Secularism should take the lion’s share of the blame. We are becoming a broken isolated horde of individuals and no one can force us to socialize or conquer our fears. More and more Americans are becoming completely unable to function in society and even just meaningless sex is not even on the table anymore, we are alone tapping on our phones and punching away at our keyboards.

• 10% Age
  If you are a woman over 40, then yeah you are out of luck, however men have no excuse as we mostly build wealth with age. Our provider function just gets better with time. Many men are terrified of being taken to the cleaners after a divorce and in many ways, instead of men amassing wealth to have a wife and kids, they now reject a wife and kids to try to gain said potential wealth. Socially we are living in very backward times. In the past established men had lots of children, and men were pushed to achieve much earlier in life thus having more time for more children. 
• 9% State of the World

Again, since very few people commit suicide, the world at its worst isn’t bad enough to choose non-existence. This is a non-excuse.

• 5% Climate Change/Environment
  The only people who worry about this are in the most under populated and eco-friendly nations to begin with. This is a non-excuse.
• 2% Partner Doesn’t Want Kids

There is a mistaken belief that it is women who decide about having kids. In many ways it is male aggression that drove us to achieve and want to put our last name on everything we could. Limp-wristed Beta-males are not going to fight to make sure that their family line continues, or go out and try to build their own house to make use of limited resources. Weak men are just as deadly to the family as bloated Feminists and their Secular Liberalism. Male aggression is what drives populations up, not guilting women into giving birth.

For those of you reading this in nations like Hungary, Poland or Russia that desperately want to change course demographically, you need to reject unfettered Liberalism and extreme Secularism right now. The West is probably doomed because it is built on this very same rotting ideological foundation. Liberalism isn’t part of the West – it is the West. So, they are in all likelihood stuck riding this out till the end. I very much so hope to be wrong about this. And who knows? America can be full of pleasant surprises and could find some way to nudge the country towards Illiberalism without touching even one letter of the brilliance of the U.S. The Constitution.

Paying people to have children is a good motivator and programs of the like from Putin and Orban have been successful, but this is secondary. We are wallowing in the sludge at the bottom of a mental abyss of Hedonism that we need to pull ourselves out from in order for our cultures to continue into the future. The problem of demographic decline is mental, ideological, and spiritual in nature, thus the answers to it are in kind.

Demographers looking back — years from now — on America’s annual mortality rates are going to find an asterisk on the years 2020 and 2021. The text behind that asterisk is going to give the reason why so many more Americans died in those particular years than the years right before.

The explanation, of course, will be the Covid-19 pandemic.

But those demographers of the future, to really understand American mortality in the early decades of the 21st century, are going to need another asterisk. They’re going to need an explanation why Americans of that era, before the pandemic hit, were living significantly shorter lives than their peers elsewhere in the developed world.

How much shorter? A just-published study from a global team of 27 social scientists from 13 different developed nations offers up some numbers that will take most Americans completely by surprise.

Back in 1990, the new data detail, White Americans showed the same 76-year average life-spans as the general populations of England, Germany, France, Netherlands, Norway, and Spain, with Black Americans trailing behind by seven years. By 2018, Black Americans had nearly halved the life-span gap with their White American counterparts. But those same White Americans had fallen well behind the Europeans. Their life-spans — right before the pandemic — trailed the European average by about the same three years that U.S. Blacks trailed U.S. Whites.

“White Americans have increasingly lost ground compared to Europeans,” the new international mortality study concludes, “with substantial gaps in mortality rates opening between Europeans and White Americans.”

“The comparisons with Europe,” the National Bureau of Economic Research study continues, “suggest that mortality rates of both Black and White Americans could fall much further across all ages and across richer and poorer areas.”

So what’s stopping those U.S. mortality rates from falling that “much further”? Certainly not money. The United States now spends twice as much, per capita, on health care as the average European nation.

How much money different nations spend on health care, in other words, simply does not automatically predict their health outcomes. How nations distribute their money, on the other hand, appears to tell us a great deal.

The United States has, over more than four decades now, chosen to let wealth concentrate intensely in the pockets of a few. The United States has become significantly more unequal, a much more economically stratified society. Europe has not followed suit. Until relatively recently, Europe has been able to maintain most of the landmark egalitarian gains of the mid-20th century.

The United States, by contrast, has let those gains lapse. So why should the resulting inequality translate into poorer health outcomes? Epidemiologists — the scientists who study the health of populations — have been discussing and debating that question for the past quarter-century, ever since the mid-1990s when the prestigious British Medical Journal informed readers that “studies have related income inequality to infant mortality, life expectancy, height, and morbidity, with a consistent finding that the less equitable the income distribution in a country, the less favorable the health outcome.” The studies, the journal added, “seem to show that inequality per se is bad for national health, whatever the absolute material standards of living within a country.”

In one recent review of the literature, the British Equality Trust points to “status anxiety” as the “most plausible explanation for income inequality’s apparent effect on health and social problems.”

“In more unequal societies, the data indicate, status anxiety increases not just among the poor, but across all income deciles,” note Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, authors of the widely influential 2009 book, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. “We all worry more about whether others see us as capable and successful — or as a failure.”

Threats to self-esteem and social status, the pair add, “turn out to be particularly strong sources of stress.” And stress kills.

“For decades, U.S. politicians on the right have resisted calls for income redistribution and universal insurance under the theory that inequality was a fair price to pay for freedom,” writes the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson in a thoughtful reflection on the new international life-expectancy data. “But now we know that the price of inequality is paid in early death — for Americans of all races, ages, and income levels.”

Greater equality may well be the best medicine any doctor can ever prescribe.

counterpunch.org

This week’s 11^th Annual BRICS Summit saw leading representatives of the world’s dominant cultures come together in Fortaleza Brazil for two days of planning and collaboration around policies that are tied to the common aims of humanity. Such events which celebrate mutual respect, and cooperation amongst nations are good reminders that not only has the ideology of geopolitics entirely collapsed, but that a higher, more truthful concept of human self-organization has asserted itself.

The Mushy Nothingness of Cultural Relativism

The rampant anti-Chinese (and Russian) bias pervasive in today’s society has a lot to do with the fact that people have been conditioned by a very messy world outlook known as “cultural relativism”. While attractive on the surface due to its promotion of “respect and toleration” for other cultures on the one hand and its condemnation of imperialism on the other, an ugly paradox sits below the surface of such ideology which ironically facilitates modern imperialism’s grip on the world. The paradox is most easily seen by exposing the core assumption of reasoning that lay at the foundation of all cultural relativist theory which follows:

ASSUMPTION: Because every culture is unique and equally precious, no culture has a right to influence another culture since: A) all influence could only be exerted by force of the stronger upon the weaker and B) if such influence were to occur, it can only be to the detriment of the culture being “influenced”.

CONCLUSION: Cross pollination of cultures can never occur organically as there is nothing intrinsically universal amongst all cultures that can serve as a basis for their poetic, artistic, scientific exchanges. Since all cultural groups contain no universality, “truth” is reduced to the subjective personal experience of each culture. The very definition of “knowledge” and “truth” is thus rendered totally impotent.

An embarrassing moral and political problem thus arises.

Since the “whole” of humanity objectively exists in the form of many people, cultures and nations spread over the surface of the earth in space and time, it is a fact of life that cultures will and must co-exist. The questions then follow: in what form will those cultures co-exist and how will the whole be defined? How can diverse cultures interact with each other in such a way where that each contributes the best of their own discoveries and poetic treasures with their neighbors if there is no such thing as “better or worse” (as everything is relative to personal experience and “feelings”)? How can any harmony of the parts relative to a whole exist if there is no such thing as “truth and beauty” (or inversely “lies and ugliness”)? How can one’s mind cease from turning into reason-free ooze?

Ugly Twins: Cultural Relativism and Imperial Geopolitics

It was blindly asserted by such modern “geopolitical philosophers” as Samuel Huntington and Sir Bernard Lewis whose ideology exerts such powerful influence over western thinking today; humanity could only exist as a sum of infinitely divisible parts within a “multi-cultural mosaic”, at best ignoring each other and tolerating differences but never taking the time to understand or appreciate our sameness.

Huntington famously concluded in his influential book “Clash of Civilizations” that peace on earth is fundamentally impossible since Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and Judaism are all fundamentally incapable of coexisting peacefully due to their distinct ideologies and intrinsic differences. This cynical perspective fundamentally denied each cultures’ parallel characteristics, and common discoveries clothed behind different appearances yet containing the same substance of Love, Justice, Truth, Beauty and morality shaping both the universe and human condition as a living expression of the force guiding the creative unfolding of that universe.

The Reality of Universal Progress

The annoying fact which such thinkers as Huntington and his followers choose to ignore is that the greatest renaissances and rates of progress recorded in the human experience never occurred by distinct cultural groups simply transforming themselves at random, or doing what ones’ ancestors did, but rather all periods of progress were shaped by the cross pollinating of the best ideas of various cultures, never just replacing one set of ideas FOR another, or adding one set of ideas TO another, but rather creating new wholes that are more than the sum of their parts and containing ever greater degrees of power to creatively discover and communicate truths of those universal principles guiding mankind and nature. This is the proper definition and purpose of “science” and “art” and their effects as technological progress as expressed across ALL cultures.

The explosion in Population growth is not a proof that humanity is a cancer as some misguided modern environmentalists are want to do, but rather that we are a species of constant perfectibility.

This was true when the Greeks Solon, Pythagoras and Plato ventured to North Africa to learn the greatest philosophical and scientific discoveries of their day. It was true when greatest ideas of India and China cross pollinated during the Gupta Period. It was true when African/Greek ideas and modes of thinking were re-discovered and applied by the Jewish, Christian and Arab scholars who organized the great 8th Century Ecumenical Alliance of the Carolingian Empire under the leadership of the Caliph of Baghdad and Charlemagne. It was again a reality when the Abbasid Dynasty and the later Andalusian Renaissance when Islamic scholars such as Haroun Al-Rashid and Ibn Sina again collected the greatest poetic and scientific works of the east and west to reform of the Islamic world. It was also true when those same Greek/African/Arabic works were then transmitted to the Christian world in the form of the 15th century Florentine renaissance whose application saw the greatest rise in the potential population density humanity has ever experience (yet) (1).

The renaissance principle, whose lawful obedience is so vital for the successful survival of the human species is expressed in every major culture’s history at various periods. Several leading representatives are pictured above (top row): Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, Rabbi Philo of Alexandria, and the Ibn Sina (bottom row): Confucius, Plato and Gupta Empire Leader Chandragupta I.

The New Silk Road Manifests as the Basis for a New Global Renaissance

Today, a new paradigm has arisen through the multi-cultural BRICS process, Shanghai Cooperation Organization and New Silk Road. This new paradigm is not based on a passive co-existence of parts as they are managed by a Hobbesian Leviathan, but rather on the commitment to common goals and principles of progress which all participating cultures aspire to. As Chinese President Xi Jinping stated clearly in his November 6, 2019 address at the China International Expo:

“Of the problems confronting the world economy, none can be resolved by a single country alone. We must all put the common good of humanity first rather than place one’s own interest in front of all… I have faith in the bright prospects of China’s economic development. China’s development, viewed through the lens of history, is an integral part of the lofty cause of human progress… The Chinese civilization has always valued peace under heaven and harmony among nations. Let us all work in that spirit and contribute to an open global economy and to a community with a shared future for mankind”

This is not rhetoric.

This is the natural state of mankind whenever we allow our creative reason to actively shape the experience of our senses rather than allowing our blind senses to shape our reason. The collective experience of universal history and human progress testify to the fact that this outlook is the natural way human beings survive and grow within the universe whose Creator may be called by many names, yet whose law of moral and creative reason is the same. Whether one is Confucian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, or Christian, we are absolutely distinct from the other living beasts due to our capacity to discover, and change the principles of creation making our lives happier, more purposeful and ensuring ever greater peace and security for the generations to come after us.

(1) This was elaborated upon beautifully in a 2003 speech on a Dialogue of Cultures prepared by Schiller Institute chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

Alessandra BOCCHI

Europe’s birthrate is among the lowest in the world. At 1.59 per year, the European Union’s current births are too low to sustain its survival. And while native birthrates have declined, Europe’s overall population continues to grow due to mass immigration.

For the younger generation in Europe, employment is either non-existent or so poorly paid that it doesn’t allow them the means to support themselves, let alone a prospective family. But Europe’s declining birthrate is by no means just a result of work precariousness—there’s a much deeper cause.

A 27-year-old conservative thought-leader in Italy and Europe, Francesco Giubilei, publisher of Future Nation magazine, says this crisis stems mainly from cultural and social factors. Today’s youth is taught by its parents, of the anti-traditionalist ’68er generation, that there is little intrinsic value in building a family. The consequence has been a generation that’s planning its lives without any aspirations to have children. Additionally, European youth are moving from rural areas to large cities in search of study and job opportunities. This has contributed to them leading atomized lives detached from community. Today’s youth feels that it doesn’t belong anywhere, and so why should they leave anything behind for a future generation?

“There is a total lack of perspective in my generation’s way of approaching life. They don’t see a future for themselves beyond the present moment,” Giubilei said. “Furthermore, there’s the added factor of our provincial, rural areas disappearing into our cities. Our youth moves to study or to build work opportunities in a city, but the family isn’t factored into this equation. Many of them end up living individualistic lives with no proper direction beyond their careers.”

For politicians, the crisis of meaning among European youth isn’t an issue worth addressing. They see declining birthrates as a natural result of post-industrialized economies, where people living comfortable lives do not feel the need to have children. And importing a new generation of young people from abroad seems like a convenient solution to an aging European population that isn’t able to sustain itself.

As the German migration researcher Wolfgang Kaschuba, who works for the Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research, recently warned: “If Germans want to maintain their economic well-being, we need about half a million immigrants every year. We need to guarantee that our society stays young, because it’s aging dramatically.”

Among European politicians, only the populists have been challenging this issue. In doing so, they’ve gained popularity among disaffected, working- and middle-class people.

These new leaders have no qualms about using the words “replacement migration” to describe how ruling elites prefer to address declining birthrates. Unlike in the United States, where such contentions are still controversial, European conservatives have brought them into the mainstream.

The leader of the Dutch conservative Forum for Democracy, Thierry Baudet, told The American Conservative: “It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a state of belief of European leaders.” He noted that “it’s important that we don’t replace the European population with foreigners.” Similarly, a European member of Parliament for the anti-immigrant League party in Italy, Francesca Donato, told The American Conservative: “We are not in favor of the replacement of the Italian population with foreigners. We want to preserve our national identity, culture, and history.” She clarified that while “multiculturalism is welcome, it shouldn’t translate into complete replacement.”

The leader of the Spanish Vox party, Santiago Abascal, argued that immigration is a political euphemism for the trafficking of cheap labor into Europe so that multinational companies and financial interests can increase their profits: “The establishment argues that our system must be maintained in the face of an aging population, but mass immigration renders work increasingly precarious.” According to Abascal, the 2015 refugee crisis was used as a pretext to further the economic ambitions of Brussels bureaucrats at the expense of Europe’s working population, especially its youth.

Baudet also argues that establishment politicians push for immigration because they favor a globalized worldview under which national identities will disappear: “They genuinely believe we should move beyond religious and national identities to become global citizens.” Baudet, however, thinks such policies would be disastrous, not only because they risk plunging Europe into “tremendous conflict,” but also because they risk creating a “brain drain” from Africa and the Middle East.

The solution to this problem, many of these conservative leaders say, is to provide motivation and assistance to Europe’s young people so they have their own children. Abascal uses Hungary as a model, where, under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, families that have three or more children are given government grants to buy houses and no longer have to pay income tax. The state finances free nurseries, allowing women to re-enter the workforce without having to worry about childcare costs. In addition, Hungary has inscribed Christianity in its constitution to create a strong religious identity, providing its youth with a sense of direction and meaning.

The problem of low birthrates ultimately lies internally, within Europe’s culture and social life. A young generation that doesn’t aspire to have families and that’s increasingly alienated from any sense of community has driven much of the crisis. Whether Europe can be salvaged and revived is yet to be seen.

theamericanconservative.com