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The Modern Birth Dearth
Experts agree that the current low birth rates in the developed world are a problem. Almost all developed countries have a birth rate less than the population replacement level of 2.1 children per couple.
South Korea is the worst, with a current birth rate of about 0.75 children per couple. If you ask Grok it mumbles about:
High cost of housing and children
Work culture
Gender inequality and patriarchy
Job market pressures
Tiger moms directing kids’ eduction
But I suspect that the problem is the hegemonic dominance of politics and government in modern society. In other words, the educated class. But what do I know?
I’m reading The Origin of Politics by Nicholas Wade. It’s the fourth book in which Wade — for 30 years a New York Times writer and editor — has gone against the narrative.
The Origin of Politics is not so much about political origins as a discussion of the conflict between politics and culture, understanding culture as a combination of biological programming and social evolution.
However, there is a school of “social constructionism” in lefty social science circles that argues that “all human behaviors are cultural” and forget genetics.
Yes, and Wade got into a lot of trouble over A Troublesome Inheritance where he argued for evolution and genes and got pushback from the scientists.
Mind you, back in 1982 Wade wrote with William J. Broad the book Betrayers of the Truth in which they discuss historical and contemporary examples of scientific fraud.
But what struck me in The Origin of Politics was this statement about the left:
The idea of inherited human nature is also opposed by many on the left. A fixed set of behavior would stand in the way of their ideas for reforming society. Marx and Engels proposed to abolish the family as the basic unit of all human societies. Their followers have sought to eliminate the hated patriarchy of the father and to divert people’s allegience form the family to the state.
You can see the point of the dustup. The whole point of the left is that “we” are going to execute a “fundamental transformation” of society — in the memorable words of President Barack Obama. What is stopping us is injustice and inequality. And the family, and patriarchy, and capitalism, and billionaires, and racist-sexist-homophobes.
But if human society is basically formed as a net consequence of genes and social and cultural evolution then there is very little for lefty politicians and activists — and government funded scientists — to do. And that must be wrong!
Do you see how this explains our lefty friends? How it explains the whole gender thing? How it explains the lefty feminist movement?
If you have Plans for society you are not going to believe that society evolves, and that some adaptations will work, and some adaptations will not work. You fill the streets with devoted activists and demand Change.
Why does one adaptation work and another adaptation not work? Good question. What social change resulted in the South Korean birth-rate of 0.75? Obviously, in the long term it does not matter, because the way things are going there won’t be a South Korea in a century from now.
Is monogamy a good idea? The Romans started it and the Jews and Christians picked it up.
Is contraception a good idea? Abortion? Divorce on demand? Good question.
Is careers for women a good idea? Women in administrative hierarchies a good idea? Good question.
Is normalization of homosexuality and transgenderism a good idea? Good question.
Is capitalism a good idea? Good question.
Is government welfare a good idea? It seems to have destroyed work and marriage in the lower classes.
And on and on. In the present age we are taught that conscious direction of traffic from the educated elite and from scientists is a Good Thing. But is it?
The fact is that humans are born, live and die; families come and go, political entities come and go, empires come and go. Species come and go; genuses come and go. And nobody knows what comes next.
But we sure would like to know, and we sure like to think that we know how the world works. And the solar system, and the galaxy, and the universe.
And yes: is the universe all there is?
Meanwhile what are we going to do about births at less than replacement?
| perm | 02/17/26 1:19 am ET | comments |
Is Amelia the Poster Girl for Internet Media?
A while back I developed my Three Ages of Communication:
Age of Parchment
Age of Printing Press
Age of Free For All
But then I read Martin Gurri’s Revolt of the Public, first published in 2014 and updated in 2018. He hass five waves of communication:
Invention of Writing
Invention of Alphabet
Invention of Printing Press
Invention of Mass Media
Invention of Internet
The point about Mass Media is that is it a one-way communications medium. But the Internet is two-way. That is big. Very big.
And if you didn’t understand what that meant, now you do with the creation of the Brit Amelia, who’s an AI goth girl with blue hair that carries a Union Jack wherever she goes. The joke is that Amelia was created in a gubmint attempt to suppress WrongThink. And then a guy creataed Amelia on AI to make the opposite point, the populist nationalist notion of Good Old Britain for the Britons.
The point is that Amelia could never have appeared in the Mass Media Age, because the whole point of Mass Media is that only the ruling class and its bribed apologists — or just obedient servants — in the media get to tell the story.
Scott McKay at The American Spectator is musing about all this today. And he makes a useful point. You don’t need a big media infrastructure to produce Amelia, like we saw in the Age of Hollywood and the Age of Network TV.
You don’t need to cast anyone to play Amelia. She’s going to look fairly consistent in iteration after iteration, because AI can do that and because the people participating in moving that meme will prompt it to do that. She is, in part, an AI viral-media answer for what oral tales did for Robin Hood — a powerful folklore meme personifying an idea that resonates with large swaths of people.
YES! And when you think about this, our new media age is the first time since women passed down fairy tales from mother to daughter that ordinary people have had a chance to participate in media. Because with AI anyone can do it.
Yep, right now everyone who is anyone is wringing their hands about how nobody will have a job in five years, because AI. Maybe so.
But meanwhile ordinary people can create their own stories on the Internet and spread them around on social media. And this is the first time since whenever when this has been possible.
Of course, it all may go wrong. And maybe everyone will still have a job in the AI age.
Because, as of right now, nobody has a clue what will happen.
| perm | 02/14/26 4:06 am ET | comments |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
The more politics, the more enemies.
Men have a Culture of Insult, as in “what’s yer problem, pal?”
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: The sad fate of the Little Darlings of the Ruling Class
