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lol, tell me how you really feel Darwinism is a thing, 'only the strong survive in nature'.
Underdeveloped countries TFR are better than developed countries. And yes poor folks have more babies than career minded college folks. Seen it in my research. However, I came to a different conclusion than yours.
If the top dawg, stays top dawg the underlings can't move up to the top dawg position. Developed countries might struggle more (w/sluggish to none population growth) than the underdeveloped and if they can't hang tight, they may will wash out ... rich successful folks don't live forever and if they don't replace themselves, well there you go.
The population that isn't getting noticed are the hunter-gathers living in places like the Amazon. They live hidden away from the rest of the world. The rest of the world's problems are not theirs. They learned how to hide from the rest of the world 1000s of years ago and that is how they have survived.
The first, you say 80,000 years and I'm thinking more like 10,000 years, but disease is what took those folks out. (see ancient civilizations and math) Women in child birth would loose many pregnancies. A person was considered old if they reached the age of 40. Yes, there was a lot more manual labor, not because they were not smart, but because they hadn't developed the machinery, that later civilizations used their math to create. Knowledge was passed down for 1,000s of years, but not through an education system, but through each other. Today we horde knowledge and we don't care what or how the other guy is doing.
We're living longer today, because of medical science and babies have a greater survival rate at birth, today. So the need to have a dozen kids to have five survive, isn't there.
However, if something like the Black Plague (medical science has to figure it out) hits a population of 10 Billion people every 100 - 150 years and the population trends today's culture continues, idk --- I see humans as the Dinosaurs of our time. Darwinism, 'only the strong survive in nature' but, there needs to be enough of 'em to do it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by herringbone
The people(s) you are referring to are not 'hidden away.' 1/2 of my ancestry/family is in/from south america, and I have been to the amazon. I am curious as to why you have mentioned these people in your post; it seems like a non sequitur. What is your point?
Today’s so-called uncontacted people all have a history of contact, whether from past exploitation or simply seeing a plane flying overhead.
Your latter statement that 'we horde knowledge' is greatly suspect. What are you referring to? Knowledge/data has never been more available than it is now, currently.
Quote:
Originally Posted by herringbone
The people(s) you are referring to are not 'hidden away.' 1/2 of my ancestry/family is in/from south america, and I have been to the amazon. I am curious as to why you have mentioned these people in your post; it seems like a non sequitur. What is your point?
I mentioned them, because they are not effected by modern day living in anyway shape or form. In other words as populations decline and neighborhoods see vacant homes, that is something indigenous folks of the Amazon, as well as, the Bush People of Africa, (etc.) won't be effected by. They won't be effected by suppliers going out of business, because there are not enough consumers to buy their product. They won't be effected by an increase in taxes so that local government can keep the lights on. They may be effected by certain diseases, but they have lived 1000s of years without modern medical science an arm's length away. If a bug breaks out and infects those living within densely populated areas killing those folks, guess who is the survivor. The people who live far, far, away.
I can't read your link, I'm not going to register a free account with BBC just for that.
"Today, there are approximately 100 tribes in the Amazon rainforest that have not interacted with the modern world."
Uncontacted peoples generally refers to indigenous peoples who have remained largely isolated to the present day, maintaining their traditional lifestyles and functioning mostly independently from any political or governmental entities.
Quote:
Originally Posted by herringbone
Your latter statement that 'we horde knowledge' is greatly suspect. What are you referring to? Knowledge/data has never been more available than it is now, currently.
My grandmother was born in the late 1800s and my folks in 1920; they lived through the Great Depression. When they spoke, I listened --- Internet is great, but I'm not going to find what they had to offer on the Internet. That sense of family and community is working towards being obsolete. Judging from my experience alone and I know I am not alone in my experiences --- I haven't seen extended family in 40 years. Those I was in contact with, every weekend and summers, I know nothing about them today. And it's been over 40 years since I borrowed a cup of sugar from a neighbor. I don't even know their names.
While there may be those that still have that sense of community, where as they learn, through generational knowledge, but it isn't a culture tradition, like it once was --- we are more of the, 'if they haven't figured it out on their own by now, too bad', culture. Maybe as populations decline the future will hold that humanity will get back that sense of community we've lost.
Last edited by Ellis Bell; 03-31-2023 at 08:03 PM..
Reason: completed an incomplete sentence
There has been a lot of talk about Nagi, but not quite as much information.
I wondered just how many children we are talking about since Nagi only has a population of 6,000, but I can't find that information. Lots of talk about 3 kids, though.
You really have to wonder just how many women of child bearing age there could be in Nagi. That would be - all things equal - about 3,000 women. Most articles feature families who moved away from the city in order to have children and one article points out there was a rise as young families moved to Nagi, but it has settled back down, now.
I have not seen a cost analysis, so Nick Eberhardt's remark about the cost effectiveness of subsidizing birth and raising of children still hangs in the air. Eberhardt (The Depopulation Bomb) feels it is too expensive to work out, long term.
The sorts of people usually featured in articles about Nagi are the reason the human race will not become extinct. It will take a very long time, but eventually the "no way would I have kids" crowd will die off and the "we always wanted more kids" crowd will simply outnumber the other groups. Then TFR goes back up, but at what point?..... I think it is many generations out and in will occur a much less populated world.
True, and clearly the Japanese have a lot of work ahead of them if they are to emulate Nagi all across the country. In fact, it's probably not possible to turn things around, unless they embark on a concerted national effort including allocating hundreds of billions of dollars for the subsidization of families.
If I were in charge of Taiwan, Japan, and Korea, I would basically pay people to have babies. I don't really see any other way to save these countries.
Multiply this by 50 million and you have a reasonable explanation for our plummeting native population. Individually, everyone has good reasons for choosing not to procreate:
"The world's too crowded."
"Global warming."
"I don't like kids."
"It costs too much."
"It would adversely affect my lifestyle."
"Can't find a good [wife/husband]."
"I've got lots of problems & I don't want to bequeath my defective genes to my children."
"I don't want to ever grow up."
"I was abused as a child."
"None of my friends are having kids."
etc.
I live in a suburban community near an urbane eastern metropolis, and many if not most of the white, affluent, native born 30s-40s-50s cohort around me seem to have chosen not to raise families. Or, they will have at most 1-2 children. Most do not live with, or near, their parents and in-laws. Most see no issues or problems with this huge life decision.
I believe that nationwide, this is pretty much the norm nowadays. There's no real economic reason why people can't have a child or two. They just don't see the point, they'd rather enjoy their single or dink lifestyle, and, increasingly, there is no peer pressure or church/synagogue pressure to have children.
Search for "why aren't people having kids" and you will find dozens of reasons and rationales similar to the above. It's become normalized.
People immigrating here from Third World or lesser developed countries often remark, "Where are all the kids? Why aren't you having kids?" In their communities back home, kids were the norm.
To return to a "normal" replacement level of 2.1 babies per mother, modern countries will need to apply financial incentives.
The town of Nagi in western Japan has a high birth rate and has attracted attention not only from other municipalities and prefectures around the country, but from Korea and other countries as well. They achieved this by subsidizing daycare and offering free medical care to children, and offering parents subsidized housing and stipends for each child. It took about 20 years to achieve this remarkable turnaround, and now families there typically have 3-4 children. Increasingly, it is being viewed as a model for the rest of the country, but some are saying that any such policies are coming too late to make much difference.
I question their pessimism, because regions of the world have gone through many cycles of population implosion and explosion in eons past. Europe lost an estimated 30% of its population (some estimates run to 60%) during the Black Death of 1346-1353 A.D., for example. The Middle East lost one third of its population as well. Yet, in the ensuing decades, the population rebounded.
Nature seems to have a way of replenishing animal populations instinctively. After World War Two, for example, the U.S., Europe, and Russia all had very high birth rates for several years, in what was called the Baby Boom. Interestingly, however, Japan did not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by blisterpeanuts
To return to a "normal" replacement level of 2.1 babies per mother, modern countries will need to apply financial incentives.
According to the video Listener2307 posted, that only works for the women who were planing on having babies anyway.
When I had my oldest son 38 years ago, I was standing in the grocery check out with him and a couple of women, who were together and talking together; they notice me with my baby. One said to the other, 'I want one so bad, but I want to wait until my husband and I are financially stable.' What I was thinking to myself while listening, my husband I did the same thing. Funny, he was fired the day our son was born.
What I learned from my experience --- there is no such thing as being financially stable to start a family. Or to get married for that matter. If a person is waiting to start --- (anything) they're not going to get past the start.
Any way I listened to their discussion in the video, which made me think of that time, and your post allowed me to remark about it. Stephen J Shaw, data analyst, is equating childless women to those who put off having babies only to find themselves childless in their 40s. He gave to that group a number, but I forget how many he counted, that rate in that category.
Quote:
Originally Posted by blisterpeanuts
Nature seems to have a way of replenishing animal populations instinctively.
Humans are animals within the animal kingdom and there have been five mass extinctions within the last 4 Billion years. They did not get replenished, they disappeared. Maybe, survival instinct will kick in, in humans, but for now and farther on into the future, fewer births is the new norm.
Last edited by Ellis Bell; 03-31-2023 at 08:33 PM..
Reason: spell check
Humans are animals within the animal kingdom and there have been five mass extinctions within the last 4 Billion years. They did not get replenished, they disappeared. Maybe, survival instinct will kick in, in humans, but for now and farther on into the future, fewer births is the new norm.
Humans are almost certainly the only animals who are capable of contemplating the meaning of their survival.. of what it means to endure and persist, or to refrain and fail. In this thread, we have assumed, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, that our potential extinction would be a grievous loss. It may be. Or it may not... whether to ourselves, who currently exist and are here to contemplate the matter... or to Mankind as a whole.
Without verging too far of topic, I respectfully submit, that whether Humanity thrives perpetually, or goes extinct, is not normatively clear. Is it good or bad? I don't know. But we do know, that unlike other animals, we can at least pose the question, and depending on our answers, see as to how much primacy to accord to our mere instincts.
...............Without verging too far of topic, I respectfully submit, that whether Humanity thrives perpetually, or goes extinct, is not normatively clear. Is it good or bad? I don't know. But we do know, that unlike other animals, we can at least pose the question, and depending on our answers, see as to how much primacy to accord to our mere instincts.
Based on the comments about various tribes who exist without contact with civilization, I would say the chances of mankind disappearing altogether is nil. Those tribes have existed for probably 10's of thousands of years as have a couple of island tribes.
It looks to me like equilibrium is reached when women generate multiple children and the population as a whole lives out a natural life. The problem with modern civilization is the enormous expense placed on society when people no longer work. I would imagine in the natural world "retirement" status is never reached.
That doesn't mean I would want to live like that, but it is worth understanding.
As long as We, The Civilized, don't go all nuclear on each other and poison our blue ball so that we have to act out "On The Beach", life on earth should go on forever..... almost.
As long as We, The Civilized, don't go all nuclear on each other and poison our blue ball so that we have to act out "On The Beach", life on earth should go on forever..... almost.
“On the Beach†influenced me deeply, especially as it was written by a fellow aeronautical engineer. In the book, the characters had maybe 1-2 years left to live, until global radiation cataclysm overwhelmed even their little outpost of the world. Having more children would have of course been out of the question. What was very much the question, was how best to live the brief remaining time, for those then alive.
We can change the numbers, persisting with the same question. Suppose that instead of 1 year remaining, the radiation wouldn’t have come, until 10 years. How different would have been the life-choices to be made by the characters? If instead of 10 years, make it 50 years… say, the remainder of a natural lifetime, for those who were then adults. Would these adults have had kids, knowing that the kids would all be dead at age 49?
For those of us who are child-free-by-choice (a small minority of those who ultimately don’t end up having kids – at least that’s the premise of the videos and testaments cited in this thread), “On the Beach†isn’t a story of impending cataclysm, but a self-questioning, of what the remainder of our lives means, because we choose not to reproduce. Our legacy will be the books that we have written, the papers that we have published, the symphonies that we’ve composed, the buildings that we’ve designed, or maybe the bombers or missiles whose drag polar we have calculated. In the book, the characters manufacture a hardened time-capsule or memento of human civilization, presumably to be exhumed by alien civilizations that might visit Earth, millennia hence. Our story – those of the child-free – is similar.
Thus about legacies. But another thought occurred to me: is “On the Beach†necessarily a tragedy? The suffering, whether as individuals or as nations, is certainly tragic. But what of the passage into non-existence?
... Humans are animals within the animal kingdom and there have been five mass extinctions within the last 4 Billion years. They did not get replenished, they disappeared. Maybe, survival instinct will kick in, in humans, but for now and farther on into the future, fewer births is the new norm.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ohio_peasant
Humans are almost certainly the only animals who are capable of contemplating the meaning of their survival.. of what it means to endure and persist, or to refrain and fail. In this thread, we have assumed, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, that our potential extinction would be a grievous loss. It may be. Or it may not... whether to ourselves, who currently exist and are here to contemplate the matter... or to Mankind as a whole.
Without verging too far of topic, I respectfully submit, that whether Humanity thrives perpetually, or goes extinct, is not normatively clear. Is it good or bad? I don't know. But we do know, that unlike other animals, we can at least pose the question, and depending on our answers, see as to how much primacy to accord to our mere instincts.
When I was a young 'en, my favorite show to watch on Saturdays was Animal Kingdom (70s era). My trips to the local library, I'd bring home stacks of books, along the same topics ... thus the reason my thoughts are falling along these lines in conjunction with the shrinking global population. The way I see it is, I'm watching evolution happening and it is a fascinating sight.
The only difference between the four legged animal the two legged one, is the human's ability to reason is more advanced. (a college teacher said that and I wanted to debate it; he thought I was making a joke) Humans instinct, example, the hairs stand up on the back of one's neck when they sense danger, that's survival instinct, complements of mother nature. So when you say contemplate the meaning of their survival --- I'm talking about the survival instinct ingrained in all animals in the animal kingdom, there is no thought to it, just instinctual.
I was going through some tough times financially and job wise and health wise and I just wanted to quit, because I was getting tired. And my sister says to me, 'where is your survival instinct?'. That's not something I would think would ever come out ms 6 figure a year's mouth --- but there it was. Made me go hm.
"Be fruitful and multiply", I can not help that people made a religion through what people wrote down about their world in the first few 100 years of human existence. It is an oral history, as they didn't have reading and writing during the times they are recording about .... but imo, they saw and provided the answer to the human species survival. I say that because the science articles and reports that I have read all say, species have gone extinct, because the didn't reproduce enough --- disease and their natural enemy was able to wipe 'em out.
So now the question becomes, 'where was that species survival instinct? Where is ours?
"Be fruitful and multiply", I can not help that people made a religion ...
species have gone extinct, because the didn't reproduce enough --- disease and their natural enemy was able to wipe 'em out.
So now the question becomes, 'where was that species survival instinct? Where is ours?
Most species become extinct because they can't adapt to their environment. Food supply, climate, out-competition by other species. Mankind doesn't have a potential superior competitor, and is remarkably adaptable. If Mankind goes extinct, it would be a conscious choice - almost certainly a first, for any species on earth.
Returning to an earlier theme in this thread, most religions have been incredibly adept at motivating their adherents to reproduce. Even Christianity, with its particular aversion to sex (why is that?), has prized fecundity among its laity (no pun intended). Today, there is strong overlap between atheism and the child-free movement. To refrain from having kids, by choice... is often tarred as being "godless". Religion has evolved, in something resembling biological evolution. Survival of the fittest, means that religions that didn't enjoin reproduction, died out.
It stands to reason, that those of us with muted religious sympathies, are also skeptical about reproduction. We may have a cosmic awe of the grandeur of the universe, Carl Sagan style. But if that grandeur doesn't feature a heavenly father, maybe we ourselves are less enthused about becoming earthly fathers.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by M3 Mitch
Well, we are talking about childless women, they are a "thing" now that more women have the choice to not have children. 200 years ago they hardly had that choice.
As the OP pointed out a few posts back, the women who decide to have children are having about as many as they did years ago. It's just that a higher percentage are deciding not to have any.
I don't see how this indicates someone has something to hide.
Maybe having as many as 30 years ago but not as many as historically I'd think. 10 kids was common 100 years ago and throughout history. Now 3 or 4 is a large family. I've heard that quote in some of the population docus but I think the context is since WW2.
Maybe having as many as 30 years ago but not as many as historically I'd think. 10 kids was common 100 years ago and throughout history. Now 3 or 4 is a large family. I've heard that quote in some of the population docus but I think the context is since WW2.
Years ago, I read about a pioneer woman in the old northwest (the Minnesota-Michigan-Wisconsin region) in the 1870s, who had 15 children, of whom 9 survived to adulthood.
The suffering, the courage, and the fortitude of these people can hardly be appreciated by our soft modern era. To the pioneers and farmers of the 19th Century and earlier times, a huge family meant wealth. The woman's job was invariably to have and raise those children, and be the homemaker.
Our society has changed so much over the past 150 years, that it would be virtually unrecognizable to one of them, were they to pop out of a time machine from then to now.
I don't think I would have liked to be a woman in an agrarian, pre-industrial era; the work was unending and backbreaking, and then there was the likelihood of death in pregnancy. Only the strong survived in those days. If you had an ectopic pregnancy or other complication, the baby was dead, you were dead.
The 20th Century in the developed world, that is the U.S., Canada, and Europe, plus Japan somewhat, was a time of the fading of this agrarian civilization and its replacement by modern urban lifestyles that made children an inconvenience.
The legacy of the past hung on until the late 1960s, which is probably the turning point at which Western and East Asian Rim countries permanently stopped having large families.
But, if you poke your head into a Chassidic Jewish community in New York or New Jersey, you will see families of 10-12 kids.
Interestingly, the Mormons today are experiencing a population crash, down from 3.1 or more children per mom to 1.8, tracking the general population.
When I lived in Arizona 10 years ago, I knew a Mormon who had 12 children -- 4 from his first marriage, 4 from his 2nd wife, and 4 together. I asked -- are you done? He said he'd like to have "in the teens". So I suspect there are still pockets of Mormons here and there having large families, but the overall birth rate has plunged. Catholics, too.
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Darwinism is a thing, 'only the strong survive in nature'.
