Quote: (03-31-2014 06:28 PM)Flint Wrote:
If superiority of a culture involves the ability to keep its population at least on the replacement level than a lot of supposedly great nations suck badly at the moment.
Austria, Germany, Greece and Japan have 1.43 and less births per woman.
Women in Niger, Mali, Somalia and Uganda have statistically around 6 kids. In most other African countries it's only slightly less.
The demographic reality is hopelessly stacked against Europe, the West and East Asia. Rich and educated people have stopped having kids. Face it.
The future belongs the most fertile, not to the smartest.
Does anyone here really belief that there will be any social trend that could reverse this? Masses of genetically engineered children from the lab will never be accepted by mainstream society, certainly not by a majority population in the 40+ age range in the near future.
Replace the current European leadership with the most right-wing governments there is, which would install tight migration control and which promote traditional family models, and nothing will be enough to stop the demise. Look at the countries with conservative administrations (Hungary, Belarus, etc.), they do even worse than multicultural Holland or Sweden, at least economically.
I hope I don't sound like a doomsayer. I just look at the naked facts. Marine LePen, UKIP or Putin are not capable to "protect" or "save" cultures. The real social dynamics that are happening right now lie beyond governmental control.
Let the African asylum seekers bang all the landwhale chicks in Western Europe, I don't care, I can't change it. Maybe they bring some slim, traditional black girls with them, who knows. You can't do nothing but make the best out of it, or stop whining and get the fuck out.
I don't feel threatened by the Turks in Berlin or Hamburg. Yet. But then again, in Germany it is not nearly as bad with Muslims as with the UK Pakistanis in the video.
Of course the government could change fertility rates in Europe and the West generally in the same way that they could change a whole lot of other things: by staying the hell out of such affairs.
In most developed countries that you're talking about, the problem is a welfare state that largely insulates people from the rigours -- or even the knowledge -- of existence and largely holds their hand from the cradle to the grave (giving them some busywork job along the way to make them think they're productive). Or it's a world in which women have "careers" and either don't have time for kids or offload them onto daycare at the age of three months.
At another level, we see that Europe, Japan, etc. have achieved the state (largely due to the U.S.) of not even really needing to think about national defence. It's part of the same existential issue, in my opinion. Thus, both places can devote themselves increasingly to esoteric fashions and hobbies, rather than becoming somewhat self-aware about the place in a much larger continuum than which boy band they liked at fifteen to which, like, totally hot barista they're fucking at twenty five.
A large part of having children has historically been so that they would be one's pension. It has also been about the transmission, not only of genes, but of a cultural inheritance. Space aliens arriving on earth in two thousand years, might be confused to learn that children and toy poodles are not, in fact, a kind of artistic creation or perverse invention that we dress in silly clothes doing silly things and then display for the world to see on social media. That's if people can even be bothered having kids. For a lot of people, they're a downright inconvenience that gets in the way of one's next yoga class or boozy holiday to Phuket, which seems to be about as far ahead as anyone can see into the future these days also.
Again, to go off on somewhat of a tangent, I think that's related to why people are so downright awful at saving/investing for the future. Why think about saving for old age when the state will take care of that for you? I, like, totally need to buy the newest mePhone. Does it come in pink?
At some point, we are going to have to figure this issue out as societies, and I believe we will figure it out right about the same time that the welfare state finally goes belly up. Then we will see a natural uptick in births and an equilibrium will be reached.
As for other countries, a few words. Russia is still dealing with the massive cultural fallout of several generations of communism, plus WW2. That is turning around a little, but it's probably going to take a couple more generations. It is going to be a painful process, naturally.
East Asia will eventually need to reach an equilibrium where it stops eating its own. Men (and increasingly women) working 12 hour days for stagnating incomes is unsustainable. So is the massive level of state interference in many areas (reproduction, economics, etc.) still occurring in all East Asian societies.
Finally, we come to those "high fertility" countries. Actually, most of the Muslim world is experiencing plummeting fertility rates. Several nations are already below replacement levels. This trend does not look likely to reverse either. In many ways, countries such as Iran are going to be in even worse shape than Europe.
Africa is one of the last holdouts, but even there, fertility rates are coming down rapidly (whether quickly enough or not, I don't know).
Basically, what I am saying is that this population change is affecting most of the world now (some places more quickly than others). There is absolutely no reason why Europe needs to be swamped with people from other continents when either now, or within another couple of decades, the countries those people are coming from will have their own fertility crises. This whole situation has been completely blown out of proportion and engineered by the elites in various countries, largely for their own profit.