Population Implosion: Western Civilization Has Lost the Plot

One of the reasons why I support Vivek and, indeed, every constructive Christian group I know of, is because our civilization (which includes every wealthy country in the world outside of Israel) is suffering from a complete vacuum of purpose and meaning. People are not having children, because they simply fail to see an intergenerational reason to care.

Refusing to propagate is a global malaise, affecting every wealthy country, from South Korea to Japan to Europe and the United States. Even in China, a country that is not rich at all (on a per capita basis), the birthrate has now fallen to the lowest it has been since Mao’s imposed famines in the 1960s. Chinese are calling their refusal to live "Let it rot."

People who don’t really see the point of life either engage in weird death-cult ideologies (like abortion or euthanasia as a sacrament), or the equivalent of sacrificing people on the altar of Gaia (forcing ruinous “Green” policies on a third world for whom expensive energy leads to dead people).

And these same people are distracted by anything else that might give them a sense of momentary meaning, however fleeting or superficial. From LGBTQ+ to invented COVID crises, to manufactured outrages over everything from January 6 to BLM, our world is careering through an endless stream of mass psychosis events. None of these lead to investing in other people, let alone investing in children.

There is no easy cure for apathy. Sometimes (and this is true for Jews), all you really need is an enemy. Having children is a way to fight for survival against those who want you dead. I think the fact that Israel has enemies is the reason that Israel is the only wealthy country in which secular woman have 3 or more children, far above the “replacement rate” of 2.1. Israel is the only civilized or wealthy country in the world where this is true.

But the rest of the world does not have an enemy. Not the kind that makes people decide to have children.

So the only alternative would be a positive civilizational goal. Something to live for. Something to give everyone a reason to invest in the future. A reason to make the investments needed to have children, instead of just living to maximize the pleasure we enjoy before we die. Vivek is trying to promote such a vision, though he is undercut from every side, especially from a cynical GOPe punditry.

Whether from Vivek or elsewhere, positive visions are very hard to build, share, and sustain. We Jews have plenty of positive visions – but we still would not exist today if it were not for anti-semitism. Israel would only have population growth among the ultra-orthodox (in whose ranks I include myself) if it were not for Hamas and other enemies of the Jews. Can a shared national political vision, like Vivek’s, stand a chance? I don’t have a better idea.

Can a strong Christian revival lead to a revival in our nation? I don’t know. Here are the figures-by-group:

Even more relevantly... here are the rates that show which groups are well placed to greatly improve their reproduction:

The groups with big fat bumps at the bottom are better placed. Muslims, Mormons, Hindus - and even atheists are better than standard Christian denominations. Jews, on average, don't have children (though observant Jews are an exception - many families have more than 5).

I don't have answers for America or for the rest of the world. But we have to clearly acknowledge the problem in order to have a chance to save, quite literally, the future of humanity. Without people, nothing in the universe has any meaning.