> The world needs to find different cultural norms around children such that we can have a stable population and happy children.
Unfortunately, the world is dead. It can play around with cultural norms as if they are toys for whatever time it has left, but the diagnosis is terminal.
You don't have enough children, all of you, the fertility rate is below replacement and it is not a blip or a fluke. Children who grow up in your world are discouraged from even liking the idea of having children of their own some day. They grow up hearing all the same dumb jokes on sitcoms about how horrible it is to get married, to be pregnant, to raise children. The internalize it, and the next generation is smaller than the last. This isn't reversible.
> For most of human history, raising a family was not really a choice, culturally speaking
Only because if it was a choice, then you wouldn't be here to casually quip about "human history". A humanity that doesn't raise families has no future, there can be no one a thousand years from now to talk about past history.
Organisms that do not reproduce become extinct. It's been hardwired into our biology since day one. Talking about it as if it were some choice is bizarre and indicative of a lack of self-comprehension. Might as well talk about not having a choice in whether you breathe or eat.
The same people who talk about dangerous and virulent memes, the so-called "disinformation" are no more immune than those who wallow in the things.
> We’ve given up our stable optimum of centuries and clearly not yet found a new one.
The pessimism is unwarranted. As you glibly point out, we have survivorship bias in discussing the history of those who survived and reproduced. So shall it be one hundred or thousand years from now, discussing the rise of whatever culture or cult succeeds in keeping their sub populations fertility rate above the replacement rate.
Humanity will be just fine. There are eight billion of us and growing, and while fertility dropping is increasingly a localized economic issue, it hardly threatens our species survival. Even when population peaks (projected in a few decades), there will be billions of us for centuries to come. And it’s impossible for you or anyone else to predict how civilization and culture will change or grow over such timeframes. Imagine someone in 1623 wringing their hands over humanity’s downfall based on whatever was happening in their tiny corner of time and space.
Because there is a population 'bulge' of younger people who haven't yet had children.
For a very simplified model, imagine at t=0 there were only 'x' people all of whom were twenty-years-old.
Run time forward to t=20 - some of the twenty-year-olds will have died, so the surviving population will be maybe 0.95x, but also some will have had kids, let's say the fertility rate is 1.0 children per woman, so the group as a whole will have had roughly 0.25x children. This means the population has grown to 1.2x despite lower than replacement fertility.
Unfortunately, the world is dead. It can play around with cultural norms as if they are toys for whatever time it has left, but the diagnosis is terminal.
You don't have enough children, all of you, the fertility rate is below replacement and it is not a blip or a fluke. Children who grow up in your world are discouraged from even liking the idea of having children of their own some day. They grow up hearing all the same dumb jokes on sitcoms about how horrible it is to get married, to be pregnant, to raise children. The internalize it, and the next generation is smaller than the last. This isn't reversible.
> For most of human history, raising a family was not really a choice, culturally speaking
Only because if it was a choice, then you wouldn't be here to casually quip about "human history". A humanity that doesn't raise families has no future, there can be no one a thousand years from now to talk about past history.
Organisms that do not reproduce become extinct. It's been hardwired into our biology since day one. Talking about it as if it were some choice is bizarre and indicative of a lack of self-comprehension. Might as well talk about not having a choice in whether you breathe or eat.
The same people who talk about dangerous and virulent memes, the so-called "disinformation" are no more immune than those who wallow in the things.
> We’ve given up our stable optimum of centuries and clearly not yet found a new one.
Good news. You still have -30 years to find one.