The ideology of modernity is pulling us over a demographic abyss

I just saw an essay in First Things that blew me away. “Modernity’s Self-Destruct Button” is a penetratingly profound article that deserves wide circulation. I would be remiss not to mention it.

“[M]odernity seems hellbent on destroying itself.” So says the inimitable Louise Perry, journalist extraordinaire and ceaseless campaigner for common sense. She trembles not in the face of political correctness. I have mentioned her before. With a huge following, she is an avatar of pro-family feminism.

Modernity is characterised by “individual subjectivity, scientific explanation and rationalisation, a decline in emphasis on religious worldviews,” etc. Sounds like secularism on steroids.

Ms Perry is right. Modernity is going to heck in a handbasket as we speak. Its demise is unavoidable, irreversible and slowly picking up speed. Rome didn’t die in a day. Maybe modernity peaked in the US in the late 1960s with the explosive proliferation of graduate schools to avoid military service. The academy became the higher education industry, manufacturing hordes of government-subsidised academics “producing” ream upon ream of “research” servicing the Frankfurt School agenda. This is how we educated the common sense out of the chattering class.  

Today the chatterers reign, relentlessly pushing utopian schemes that just don’t work for ordinary people. Understanding that is beyond the ken of “well-educated” secularist fanatics. You cannot change fundamental human nature. The recent US elections were a sign of popular pushback against taking on God and Mother Nature. Say what you will about either presidential candidate, but DEI, pronoun dictates, and biological men competing as females are a bridge too far for most folks.

Modernity’s hubris says we can have it all. Freedom! Freedom from children, freedom from cumbersome familial obligations, honest labour and repressive social conventions. So many rights, so few responsibilities. Modernity says we are more sagacious, enlightened and advanced that anyone who ever came before us. The Age of Reason has morphed into the Age of Omniscience; those tried-and-true notions of marriage, family, social convention and personal dignity that sustained us through the millennia are now old hat. But there is a catch, says Ms Perry:

The people on whom modernity depends are failing to reproduce themselves, which means that modernity itself is failing to reproduce itself. Most voters have no idea that this is happening. Nor do most politicians. But it is happening nonetheless, and we are experiencing its early ­stages in the form of diverse political crises across the modern world.

The coming demographic crisis

Is the dying out of Homo sapiens a political crisis? Is it a spiritual crisis? Consider this. People with little money have been having children all along. But modernity says that today’s affluent cannot afford them. Antiquated notions of personal sacrifice and family lineage are alien concepts that cannot be monetised. That’s terminal thinking. As Ms Perry comments:     

As a civilisation, we are running on the fumes of the accomplishments of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.

Why are we “running on the fumes?” And why were people from the British Isles so instrumental in shaping today’s world? Without mentioning Henry VIII, Enlightenment empiricism or John Stuart Mill, Ms Perry posits:

An important part of the answer is demographics… The nineteenth-century British TFR peaked in 1820 at 5.56, much higher than the replacement figure of 2.1, which modern governments regard as economically necessary, and much much higher than the 2022 British figure of 1.49.  

Europe and her colonies attained military and cultural power only because they had a large supply of warm young bodies to send to war, and many eager young minds capable of innovation.

In South Korea — the country with the world’s lowest TFR, at 0.7 — the number of babies born in 2100 is on track to be 93 to 98 percent lower than the number of babies born this year. No disease or invading army has ever managed to destroy a country so thoroughly, and the word that springs to my mind, when contemplating such an event, is “biblical.” The question that preoccupies me is this one: Is it possible that there is indeed a God, and that he does not want us to be modern?

Modernity… eventually trips a self-destruct trigger. If modern people will not reproduce themselves, then modernity cannot last. One way or another, we’re going to return to a much older way of living.

Wow. Ms Perry gets it. The world is going back to the future “one way or another”. 

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Predictions

In 1900, Westerners were about a third of the world’s population. We’re now around 13 percent. Africans were 8 percent in 1900, now almost 40 percent. Squabbles over immigration are just getting started. With fewer Westerners coupled with uncontrolled non-Western immigration to the West, today’s vaunted diversity could descend into a multicultural miasma.

Decline of a different sort awaits northeast Asians, Asian Indians, Latin Americans and everyone else. With fewer people to support existing infrastructure and pension plans, societies will change in ways unforeseen. Things we take for granted could well  disappear altogether. The vast majority of the world’s people live in below-replacement fertility societies. Even sub-Saharan African TFRs are falling like a stone. Prolonged global fertility decline has never happened before.

Technological progress will stall:

Such breakthroughs depend on the rich world’s producing a sufficient number of young, hyper-intelligent people and putting them to those tasks… [those] who are now children are unlikely to be given the resources and freedom necessary to innovate in adulthood, since their talents will be put in service of keeping an enormous elderly population as comfortable as possible for as long as possible.

Old-age pensions will fold:

The Ponzi scheme of the old age pension is already collapsing… I wouldn’t be surprised if the British government abolished universal education before it abolished the state pension.

Revival of family life?

In the end, we will have to revert to the system that prevailed for all of human history, up until a century ago. The elderly will be cared for privately, mostly within the extended family, and mostly by women. Healthcare for the old will be mostly palliative, and the only safety net for the poor and lonely will be provided by charities. Lifespans will shorten.

Sounds like pre-modernity. As demographic winter sets in, extra-natural living arrangements such as polycules and other fads will not hold up. Less affluent societies will have fewer counsellors and social workers to enable them. A shrunken academia will churn out less woke garbage as gender/critical race studies go the way of the dinosaurs. Many will rediscover self-sufficiency and spirituality. Mankind could make a virtue of necessity.

Here is a dystopian but entirely plausible bombshell:

Until we get there, the only policy solution that is permissible within the dominant ideological framework [emphasis added] is legalized euthanasia.

And a sound projection:

[I]t is hyper-fertile groups like the Amish who will define the future of humanity. The world they create… will look neither post-apocalyptic nor techno-utopian. Rather, it will probably look much the way human societies have always looked: static, parochial, low-tech, clannish, religious, and dependent on sunlight and muscle.

“[D]ependent on [unmonetizable] sunlight and muscle.” Amen.

Ms Perry is saying that things will get worse before they get better. When you’re going through heck, keep going. This will take time. Modernity has humanity addicted to Economic Man’s produce-and-consume treadmill, where if you dispense with family, you can have a great career, upscale home and image-boosting threads and wheels. Beating an addiction is one of the hardest things in the world to do. But if my reading of Ms Perry is correct, the consequences of today’s birth dearth will inevitably wean us off what ails us.

There really won’t be any choice – survival of the species depends on it.

****

Postscript: Ms Perry is the author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. From the Amazon.com description: “This counter-cultural polemic from one of the most exciting young voices in contemporary feminism should be read by all men and women uneasy about the mindless orthodoxies of our ultra-liberal era.” A profamily polemic? It’s on my list.


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Louis T. March has a background in government, business, and philanthropy. A former talk show host, author, and public speaker, he is a dedicated student of history and genealogy. Louis lives with his family in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

Image credit: Bigstock  


 

Showing 31 reactions

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  • mrscracker
    Mr. Steven, thank you for always enabling the discussion of faith in these conversations.
    Have a blessed day !
    🙏
  • Jürgen Siemer
    commented 2024-11-25 18:19:25 +1100
    Steven,

    Please believe me, that I do understand you, a 100%!

    Why? I was there, where you are, as well, almost.

    I am born into a culturally catholic environment. With “culturally” I mean that it is basically a tribal way of life, a way of life that does protect its members against some errors, so it does have its benefits. But it is not really a solid Fundament.

    You can see this in what happened to all of us in the extended family and among friends, who left our cultural garden, our paradise we really enjoyed and had been so proud of, when we were children.

    To my knowledge, we all lost our cultural catholicism. Everybody else became blend of agnostic, atheist but maintaining sind cultural habits, like going to church on Christmas and getting your children baptized.

    I, however, became a traditional Catholic, but that was the result of a long process, of doubts, real research, a lot of reading and a lot of discussions with interesting people I had visited.

    An honest and real process at the end of which there was a point, at which faith turned into knowledge. I do not know how to describe it otherwise.

    So I just know now, that when it is over it is not over.

    I would say, that your worldview is that of the majority of the people in our countries. Myself, I am more the outcast, than you.

    You say, that that difference between us is not relevant. My answer is that, indeed, often in our daily lifes it is not. One can still enjoy life independent of what we believe happens, when it is over.

    Yet, there are difference between us explainable by our different beliefs about what happens when it is over. Look at the extremes: one of Karl’s daughters committed suicide, and that act was based on her “belief”, as she had documented in her writings.

    For me that is not acceptable. Of course, there are other important issues, where we disagree.

    And final a small comment: as we can be both at peace with us and our worldview, we are not at peace with everything in this world. We are both political animals criticizing a lot of things, but often different things.

    I am almost 60 now, but still curious and learning, and still trying to understand and learn the truth. Have grasped a corner of it, desire to get more of it.
  • Emberson Fedders
    commented 2024-11-25 17:17:53 +1100
    Well said, Steven Meyer!
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-11-25 17:04:53 +1100
    Addendum to my previous post:

    So if I’m not a member of any religious or political tribe, do I have a tribe at all.

    Over time I’ve come to realise that I’m a member of a tiny, powerless little tribe of people who share the following characteristics.

    — We are at peace with the reality that there are no certainties, that there will always be questions we cannot answer, that much of what we think is true will turn out to be, if not 100% wrong, not 100% correct either

    —We prefer our real ignorance, our real bewilderment to the fake certainties of any religion or ideology

    —And yet, for all that, we think life is worth living and we enjoy our lives with all its disappointments, agonies and pain

    —We share a sense of wonder at the world around us. Photosynthesis. What could be more amazing than that?

    And we can enjoy each other’s company with a bottle of good whisky.

    And at my age, 79, I can still enjoy participating in 50 or 100 km fun rides with my cyclist daughter. What more could I possibly want from life?

    Of course it won’t last. Nothing is forever. All the more reason to make every precious moment count.

    And when it’s over, it’s over.
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-11-25 16:27:23 +1100
    Jürgen Siemer wrote:

    “Have you ever changed your view on something fundamental, in a way you did NOT want, when you had started your search?”

    Before I answer that question you need to know something about me.

    From a very early age, in my teens, I realised that you can never be 100% certain of anything. Maybe it had something to do with my father playing poker with me. It’s a great way to get an intuitive feel for randomness and probability.

    What I learned is that every time you’re making a decision of forming an opinion you’re placing a bet. There really, truly, are NO certainties in life. NONE. Everything is a bet. EVERYTHING.

    Now what I did not realise at the time, but understand now, is that my identity is not tied up with my beliefs of the moment. And that makes it easier for me to change my mind. Not easy. There are things I’d like to be true. But easier. I can shrug my shoulders and say, “Well, dem’s de breaks. I guessed wrong.”

    This is something that I’m guessing it’s really hard for you to understand. If you’re an adherent of a religion or ideology your whole identity is tied up in that. Changing your mind about your faith is like ripping up your feeling of self.

    So with that out of the way, here’s my story.

    I grew up in Apartheid South Africa. Apartheid with all it’s horrors really got under my skin. You had to be there to appreciate how awful it was. Most people chose not to see. I really do believe Germans who said they didn’t know. I saw people working really hard at not knowing.

    Now, in South Africa at that time, if you were against Apartheid you were labelled “left wing.” So I sort of accepted I was a “leftie.” I didn’t question it much. Most of my friends also identified as part of the non-communist “left.”

    Then came the Rushdie affair. Remember that? The Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa on Salman Rushdie.

    To my utter astonishment many on the left sympathised with the Ayatollah. I lost many friends by saying this was madness.

    Take home. People on the left could be as crazy and as bigoted as the supporters of Apartheid. It was a rude awakening. Since then I’ve been a political orphan.

    But, you see, being “left” was not intertwined with my sense of self in the way your religious beliefs are intertwined with yours. After I got over the shock I was able to accept the unpleasant reality that I was, and remain, an outcast.

    Since then I’ve found other outcasts, other people who cannot identify with either right or left so it’s not all bad news.

    Another area I was forced to change my mind about was climate change. I understood the physics and figured something would have to be done. But in the 1980s it dawned on me that it was really much more urgent than I had thought.

    But, again, I want to stress, for me to change my mind may on occasion be hard, but it’s not as traumatic as it is for most people because I understood that every decision, every opinion, is a bet and you win a few and you lose a few..

    Most people are unable to handle the reality of NO certainties.

    I don’t really expect you to understand my answer because you have beliefs about which you are 100% confident. I’m at peace with the reality that there are NO 100% certainties.

    You will never grasp that. It will be forever beyond you.
  • Jürgen Siemer
    commented 2024-11-25 08:14:21 +1100
    Re: Karl Marx

    You all should read about the life of Karl, as it provides a lot of useful background info for the interpretation of his writings.

    Yes, communism, socialism, atheism, and then the Frankfurt school are indeed a very Jewish philosophical school, and why should we not point that out? Many Jews contributed to that school.

    But many Germans and French an Russians did, too.

    Viewing the writing of all of them before their background is indeed very interesting.

    Friedrich Nietzsche was the son of a protestant priest, who fell seriously I’ll early, could not sustain himself, and little Fritz was raised by his mother and aunt.

    Little Karl was born into a family with a long line of rabbis, and Karl’s father had betrayed his faith for business reasons. And Karl’s father profited and became very rich in a catholic region, now governed by protestant Prussians. So Karl’s father had also betrayed his catholic neighbors.

    Are Fritz’s fixation on the triumph of the will, his negative view on anything female, and Karl’s hate towards religion, including the Jewish religion, and his negative view on the institution of the family not at least partially to be explained by their own biographies?

    Both philosophers always sided for power, and both regarded christian or Jewish traditional moral beliefs as useless. Both were willing to compromise truth, if that led to power.

    To murder, to steal and to lie for their greater “good”, was acceptable to them. By the way, it is also acceptable in the doctrines of Islam.

    We should be able to identify evil, and not get tricked by some philosophers into accepting the evil.

    We can protect ourselves with the truth.

    At the same time, we should try to contribute what we can to save our neighbors. In this eternal war, our best weapon is the word, the logos.
  • Jürgen Siemer
    commented 2024-11-25 07:05:33 +1100
    Steven, how can you identify the truth? Your search for truth, provided you search, is sometimes led into the wrong direction by our own worldview, by our desire to confirm, what we already think.

    Have you ever changed your view on something fundamental, in a way you did NOT want, when you had started your search?

    Steven, with regard to your fairy tale claim: many scientists, including atheists, confirm that the texts are ancient and that they are written and meant to be understood as 1/ history of the people of Israel, and 2/ Accounts of eyewitnesses to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

    I cannot convince to accept, for instance, the eye witness accounts, especially, if you exclude the possibility of the interference of the creator in his creation through a miracle.

    This central decision, this axiom is yours and mine, it is and will always be a decision by you and me individually and independently from each other. So, let us leave it there.

    Nevertheless, we both of us are going to continue answering to the challenges, the other one presents.

    He who challenges, is interested – which may tell something positive about the challenger.
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-11-24 23:21:20 +1100
    Jürgen Siemer

    When you can show me some evidence that these ancient texts that you use as your guide are something more than fairy tales I’ll pay attention.

    Until then give it a rest.
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-11-24 23:17:42 +1100
    David Page,

    I’ve never said Marx was evil. Given the context of the times what he wrote made a lot of sense.

    He was also remarkably prescient about the trajectory of capitalism. While he did not use the word oligopoly, that’s what he foresaw.

    All that being said, I am not a socialist. I think of Marx as a great diagnostician but a lousy doctor. He understood the problems but his cure is worse than the disease.

    I have no easy answers but we need a regulated capitalism. We also, and this is very important, need to allow companies to fail. If a bank fails by all means bail out the customers but not the bankers or the organisation.

    If you must aid a corporation – Boeing will never be allowed to fail – a condition needs to be that ALL senior management quit immediately and give up any claims to unpaid compensation. They can re-apply for their jobs and some may be worth rehiring.

    We also need to prosecute directors whose actions are illegal. In theory we can. In practice it never seems to happen. I think there is a good case for sending former Boeing CEO McNerney to jail. What he did looks to me like looting the company.
  • Jürgen Siemer
    commented 2024-11-24 17:11:42 +1100
    In hell, there are a lot of souls from people with good intentions.

    Or from people who claimed to have good intentions.

    Or from people who had defined “good” the way they liked it.

    And there we are again: truth is absolute, it is not, it simply cannot be subjective or relative.

    You cannot understand absolute truth only based on ourselves, as our own logic is corrupted by our sinful nature, sometimes more sometimes less.

    We need to chose a “compass” for the absolute truth.

    Choose the one who claimed to be truth, claimed to be the way, the truth and the life.
  • David Page
    commented 2024-11-24 11:42:39 +1100
    Steven, Marx wasn’t evil. He lived in England at the time of what Blake referred to as “dark, satanic mills”. Slavery was gone. Not because of moral outrage, but because, in the new industrial era, it was no longer cost effective. Slaves were property. They had to be fed and cared for. In the new system workers, when not needed, could be allowed to starve to death. So Marx reacted to that reality. His solution was flawed, deeply flawed, but his intentions were honorable.
  • mrscracker
    Mr Steven, Ive been very disappointed in trade unions also. Rather than countercultural, they’ve become a self serving artifact. That’s something that can happen to a previous era’s counterculture.
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-11-23 15:21:42 +1100
    mrscracker

    Right now trade unions are about as counter-cultural as you can get.
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-11-23 07:32:50 +1100
    LOL David Page

    In fairness to Jürgen Siemer I’m the one who refers to Marx as “That bearded old Jew you love to hate.”

    BTW, shortly after Marx’s father, Heinrich, qualified as a lawyer the Rhineland, where he lived, fell under Prussian control.

    At that time the Prussian state forbade Jews from practising law. With great reluctance Heinrich converted to Lutheran Christianity in order to be able to make a living.

    This happened before Karl was born. However his father felt what he called his humiliation deeply and it seems to have made a deep impression on Karl.
  • mrscracker
    I don’t usually provide links to this website but I really was deeply moved by the ad video created by Volvo in the article. If a car manufacturer can create such an impactful, prolife message about marriage, family, & new life why can’t we ?

    https://www.lifesitenews.com/analysis/volvo-vs-jaguar-pro-life-challenges-woke-advertising-shifting-gears-in-culture-wars/?utm_source=most_recent&utm_campaign=usa
  • mrscracker
    Mr. Steven,
    While I don’t agree on issues with him I used to believe Bernie Sanders was at least sincerely his own man & countercultural. But after I trekked out to a union rally he was speaking at I was very disappointed in what I saw & heard there.
  • David Page
    commented 2024-11-23 02:58:22 +1100
    Jürgen, could you tone down the antisemitism? It grates.
  • Jürgen Siemer
    commented 2024-11-23 02:10:01 +1100
    Oh Steven, everybody has a good idea what “Commie” means. Let me remind you:

    A Commie is someone without respect for:
    - private property
    - Liberty and freedom of speech,
    - life, of the unborn, the elderly and of all non-commies,
    - truth, and,
    - God.

    All this is based on or can be deducted directly from what the bearded old Jew had written in “Das Kapital” and his other books.

    In essence, a Commie is a revolutionary. A good revolutionary wants, first and foremost, destroy, before he can built his paradise on earth, a paradise that would be a large open-air concentration camp.

    Never trust anybody who promises paradise.

    But of course, there are nice Commies, and the best Commies claim not to be Commies, and that communism had no meaning….
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-11-22 20:37:17 +1100
    Emberson Fedders

    “Commie” has just become a cuss word devoid of all meaning.

    It has nothing to with anything that bearded old Jew they all love to hate said or wrote.
  • Emberson Fedders
    commented 2024-11-22 18:19:40 +1100
    Commies?!

    Uh-oh.
  • Jürgen Siemer
    commented 2024-11-22 17:57:41 +1100
    Louis, great article.

    Commies discussing among themselves are always repeating the same old stupid and false points.

    They do not care about truth.

    They care about power.
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-11-22 17:11:37 +1100
    Emberson Fedders

    Everyone seems to be certain they know the reason for low fertility.

    I’m not so sure we do understand it.

    Economics probably does play a role. My own feeling. Reducing the huge economic obstacles to raising children is a necessary, but NOT sufficient, condition for raising fertility. I think there is also a cultural component.

    Hungary has devoted 5% of GDP to subsidising fertility. Their fertility rate did rebound a bit. But so did the fertility rates of other post-Soviet Eastern European countries after the initial post-Soviet collapse. In any case it remains well below replacement.

    It has hard to know what more they can do. They are already in per-capita terms the largest recipient of EU aid. They cannot afford more.

    I do think the fragmentation of society in a hyper-capitalist world plays a role. But I’d be the first to say it’s just a theory.
  • Emberson Fedders
    commented 2024-11-22 15:39:09 +1100
    Indeed, the causes of the current low birth-rate are economic, not cultural. The writers around here have hold of the wrong end of the stick.
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-11-22 14:24:49 +1100
    David Page, mrscracker

    David Page:

    Agreed. Except that the oligopolies that control so much of modern economies have bought legislatures.

    Only an organised labour/trade union system than can deliver votes is a viable counterweight.

    Bernie Sanders figured it out a long time ago. Had the Dem establishment not torpedoed him he might well have won in 2016.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH0hMKQU0uo

    mrscracker,

    Now if it’s counter culture you want Bernie Sanders was your man.

    Trump is NOT countercultural. He’s reinforcing the current corporate dominated culture.
  • David Page
    commented 2024-11-22 13:49:31 +1100
    We need a properly regulated capitalism.
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-11-22 13:21:22 +1100
    Paul Bunyan,

    Capitalism, at least in its contemporary form, is profoundly anti-natalist. The refusal of so many who bewail low fertility to recognise this obvious fact is mind-blowing.

    Truly, there are none so blind as those who refuse to see.

    At this point:

    Spare me tales of the personal shortcomings of Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc.

    The alternative to the predatory capitalism of the twenty-first century is not communism. That’s an entirely false dichotomy.
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-11-22 12:12:11 +1100
    Well here’s something that will probably make Ol’ Louis feel better:

    And maybe mrscracker as well.

    Why Are Young Priests Becoming So Traditional Today?
    Catholic Minute – Catholic speaker Ken Yasinski
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dabIaWxqWs

    I’m not surprised. I don’t know whether the total proportion of the population that is Christian will rise. But I did predict years ago that the Catholic Church will outlive most of the Protestant denominations.

    I mean, let’s face it, people like Joel Osteen are so obviously grifters and the prosperity gospel such obvious BS that eventually people must see through the con.

    Of course all religions, and all ideologies, are cons. But Catholicism is a better class con than the Evangelicals.

    And, let’s face it, what have I got to offer people who are suffering or feeling lost? If believing in Catholicism help you get through the day, go for it.

    The trouble comes when they start crusading.
  • Paul Bunyan
    commented 2024-11-22 12:04:13 +1100
    What do you expect? Capitalism views people as economic inputs. Human happiness and well-being takes a distant backseat to productivity.

    A large population will mean nothing when the soil can’t produce the food we need to survive.

    And despite what Mr March implies, increasing the birth rate won’t fix the Ponzi scheme. Increasing the birth rate is the Ponzi scheme.
  • Emberson Fedders
    commented 2024-11-22 12:02:14 +1100
    Indeed, poverty and low education is directly linked to high birth rate. Not sure how you’re going to reverse that in developed countries.
  • David Page
    commented 2024-11-22 10:53:15 +1100
    And, as the rest of the world rises out of poverty, the birth rate in their countries will plummet.