God blessed them, and God said unto them,
Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.
Anti-life culture
The developed world is dying.
To keep a population steady, every woman needs to give birth to another woman who gives birth to another woman. Of course, she also gives birth to male children and to children who die before reaching reproductive age, so the “replacement fertility rate” for a culture in a developed country is around 2.1 children per woman. But the actual fertility rate of the EU is only 1.5 children per woman, and of the US is around 1.7.
This means that the developed world is set to lose around 25% of its population per generation. Those who know the power of compounding will know a population won’t survive long while losing 25% per generation.
These trends do not change on a whim. In fact, since the average maternal age at first child is thirty, we already have about thirty years of foresight. Look at the number of children between 0 and 10 in your country, and compare it to the number of adults between 30 and 40. It’s probably not an upward trend.
It doesn’t take much insight to realise that, unless there is a change in the culture, the anti-life sickness is set to get worse.
The symptoms of this sickness are self-perpetuating. Pensions become expensive when there are more retirees than workers (this is set to become a crisis). Economic growth tanks (the difference in GDP growth between the EU and the US can be explained entirely by the difference in fertility). Culture becomes less vital; defence becomes more difficult - anti-life sickness has many symptoms before its final effect: death.
Like a depressed person, who cannot work up the will to get off the couch, and so ends up less active and more depressed, our societies cannot work up the will to have more children, and so end up being less supportive of children, and more anti-life.
The culture of the industrialised world, as it stands today, will die out. It’s as simple as that. If a culture doesn’t have children, it dies.
Why does this matter?
But there is an insidious theory: “I don’t need my culture to procreate biologically. I want my culture to survive through its ideas.” Here is the problem: The anti-life component of a culture, what drives its low fertility, is its ideas.
After all, its biology is pro-life. Every single one of your ancestors has had children. It is only an ideological component that can be anti-life.
The anti-life model works for a while. It can survive in parasitical form off a culture with a higher fertility. Countries like the US and regions like Europe continue to grow as long as they attract enough migrants to cover their own falling population.
But this doesn’t mean that anti-life cultures will grow. Either (1) Anti-life culture spreads to people who come, reduces their fertility, and they die out, or (2) Anti-life culture doesn’t spread to the people who come, and so it dies out, replaced by a pro-life culture.
Anti-life culture is a parasite. It necessitates a stagnant dependence on a host that neglects to shake it off. But if it grows, the host must shake it off or die. And if it does not grow, it will eventually die of its own anti-life sickness.
The whole world is now becoming anti-life. Korea and Japan have been below 1 child per woman for a while now, and China is expected to join them this year. That’s a >50% population loss per generation. India, one of the last hold-outs, has also finally dropped below the replacement rate. The Middle East is headed in the same way, as does every African country with rising GDP.
The anti-life parasite will have nowhere to feed. And the only cultures that will survive are pro-life cultures that shake off the parasite and refuse to be swallowed up.
Where are we headed?
Let’s do some maths on what happens over time.1 What does it look like if we run this math on my own country, the fairly anti-life Netherlands?
The Netherlands has a population of 18 million, a fertility rate of 1.6, a replacement rate of 2.1, and a maternal age at first birth of 30. Without any migration, famine, or war, what will its population be in 100 years?
18,000,000 * (1.6/2.1)^(100/30) = 7,271,234.
But countries aren’t the only cultural blocks. Sure, the current anti-life culture in the industrialised world is set to shrink. But there are cultures with high fertility rates that are surviving.
Think of the Amish, who grew from a population of around 50,000 in the 1950s to around 400,000 now. Their fertility rate is around 5, so they continue to grow, despite more children leaving the community than converts joining.2
Or take a look at an example that’s a little more “in the world,” the Mormons. The LDS church has 18 million members, the same as the population of the Netherlands. But, unlike the Netherlands, they have a pro-life culture, with plenty of children who mostly stay in that culture. Let’s run the maths and see how that looks:
The LDS church has about 18 million members, with an average fertility rate of around 2.8, a replacement rate of 2.1, and a maternal age at first birth of 25. Without any conversions, what will its population be in 100 years?
18,000,000 * (2.8/2.1)^(100/25) = 56,888,889.
Despite the fact that the LDS church and the Netherlands are currently about the same population, if the anti-life Dutch and the pro-life Mormons continued along the same trajectory for 100 years, the Dutch would be only an eighth of the size of the LDS.
What do we do?
We have seen that pro-life cultures, even if they are tiny minorities in large countries, can grow substantially and take the population share of anti-life cultures. Anti-life cultures, on the other hand, will inevitably die out.
If you would like your culture to survive like the Mormons, or like the Amish, you don’t need to convert others. You just have to ensure that your culture is pro-life.
A cultural attitude towards life and fertility has to be deeply engrained. Hungary spent something like 5% of its GDP to make it financially more attractive to have children, but failed to increase the fertility rate. Their secular post-Communism focusses on material comforts and newfound individualism, both of which children reduce. Israel, on the other hand, is objectively a terrible place to have children (crowded, dangerous, and expensive), is one of the few countries with a fertility rate above replacement. Their culture focusses on the continuation of their religion and the survival of their community, both of which necessitate children.
If your culture is pro-life, if it cares about procreation, children, or parenting, it will survive. But if your culture doesn’t care about procreation, children, or parenting, it’s an anti-life culture, and it’s likely to die quickly. So, without further ado, the diagnostic guide to assess whether your culture is going to survive the next century:
Three-part diagnostic for anti-life sickness
Do you value procreation? A pro-life culture sees procreation as an integral part of sex, and values it greatly. If you see it as an unnecessary extra and have a contraceptive mentality towards sex, you may have anti-life sickness.
Do you value children? A healthy, pro-life culture values children greatly. If you get annoyed when a toddler cries in the pew in front of you, instead of trying to wave at him, you may have anti-life sickness.
Do you value parenting? In a healthy, pro-life culture, housewives and businessmen are equals. If you don’t see it that way, if you would hinder family for the sake of career, you may have anti-life sickness.
A culture that fails these diagnostic criteria (like that of the industrialised world) has anti-life sickness and will die out. While a culture may be able to survive one or two of these symptoms, each one is serious, and will likely lead to the others. So if your culture has any symptoms of anti-life sickness, get help, and quick!
Population can be calculated using this formula: P * (TFR / RFR)^(y / MA)
Where P = original population, TFR = total fertility rate (children per woman), RFR = replacement fertility rate (roughly 2.1 in our society), y = number of years that have passed, and MA = maternal age at first birth (which is relevant because it determines how many years each generation takes).
Being Amish is a conscious decision. Upon reaching adulthood, Amish go on rumspringa, a period of time during which they leave their community and explore the world. They must then opt in to be baptised into the community.