Humans are a product of their culture and their genetics, both of which are thoroughly tangled up with one another. One of the more ridiculous things about the Left is they are convinced evolution stopped at the neck. They think all people are the same between the ears. It is why they chant about ethnocentrism and diversity. Yet, as our elites make war on the rest of the world’s cultures, they barely stop to listen to the complaints from those cultures. The recent troubles in the Ukraine are one such case.
Another is the Middle East, particularly Islam. This story from Iran is a good example. In the West, it has been a matter of faith that we have too many humans. Therefore, setting up abortion mills in the schools, putting girls on birth control and severely limiting our “carbon footprint” are ways to thin the herd. It’s eugenics with a smiley face. It’s also worked. If you look at the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) by country, you see that the West is well below replacement just about everywhere.
The ruling class thinks this is just a good start. They would like to see the population decimated, particularly the white portion. Iran, particularly, and the rest of Islam is generally of a different mind. Iran has a TFR of 1.67 and that may be overstated, given how they collect this data. Persians are the majority population, but not the only population. Their TFR is certainly much lower than the whole, as the minority populations are in the countryside,w here fertility is higher.
Iran’s parliament is seeking a ban on vasectomies and a tightening of abortion rules as the country moves away from its progressive laws on family planning in an attempt to increase the birthrate.
Two decades after Iran initiated an effective birth control programme, including subsidised male sterilisation surgeries and free condom distribution, the country is to make a U-turn.
Last year the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, criticised existing policy on contraception, describing it as an imitation of western lifestyle.
The 74-year-old has urged the government to tackle what he believes to be an ageing population and to double the number of people in Iran from 77 million to at least 150 million.
This week Tehran’s conservative-dominated parliament, the Majlis, voted to discuss banning vasectomies and introducing punishments for those involved in encouraging contraceptive services and abortions, local agencies reported.
The semi-official Fars news agency reported that an overwhelming majority of Iranian MPs had consented to consider the bill. Given the influence of Khamenei among MPs, the proposals are likely to pass.
“If we move forward like this, we will be a country of elderly people in a not too distant future,” Khamenei said in October, according to Fars. “Why do some [couples] prefer to have one … or two children? Why do men or women avoid having children through different means?
That’s what the numbers tell us. In fact, Islam in general is headed for a demographic nightmare never seen on this planet. They have stopped making babies. This comes after a couple of decades of astronomical birth rates. The result is nations full of young middle-aged people right now. Two decades from now it means nations full of people on the cusp of old age. In the West, technology and stored wealth will permit us to get past the Baby Boom retirement without societal collapse – maybe.
In Iran, this is not a possibility. They need a steady birth rate in order to maintain their economy and social cohesion. In America, Iran’s obsession with babies seems strange and barbaric, but they are actually ahead of the game a little. The Iranians understand the relationship between culture and biology. They also understand the need to maintain their culture. Western ruling elites think they have transcended these biological truths, so they look at Iran as a land of barbarians.
That’s what Iran gets and what the Russians get. Putin is further ahead in this game because he knows something the Iranians can’t quite grasp. That is the old Greek saying. “A successful people have old men who plant trees in whose shade they will never rest.” In other words, men who think their decedents will remember them act differently than men who can’t imagine having decedents. A whole lot of men in Russia see no reason to have decedents and that’s what Putin is trying to change.
The UN’s low population projection (which is the one that uses realistic projections of fertility)has the world’s population peaking around 2030 at between 8 and 8.5 billion people. Thereafter, the world’s population slowly declines, and the world becomes an older, less productive and less innovative place.
Wealth equals efficiency. Wealth finds new ways to consume, new resources, and new technology to use resources in more efficient ways. What the world really can’t stand is billions of people consuming like rural Chinese or Africans.
I wish enviros knew things, they might be worth engaging in conversation if they did.
I might also add, regarding Ukraine, that it has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. It hit a low in 2001 of 1.08 live births per woman, and even though it had rebounded to 1.53 in 2012, that is still very much below mere replacement rate.
Most of the rest of Europe is no higher or not much higher, and of the major European NATO powers, only the UK and France are higher. Germany and Italy are in a race for the bottom of all Europe. Poland, which would be key terrain in defending either Ukraine or the NATO-member Baltic states, has a birth rate only marginally higher.
So my question to anyone proposing such military action by the United States: if the European nations threatened by Russia will not have children to grow up to defend their own nations, why should we ask American women to bear children to go defend those nations?
I think in the last paragraph you meant to type “descendants” instead of “ancestors.”
Indeed. Thank you. My morning coffee had not kicked in yet.
Declining birthrate = declining civilization.
Too many people chasing declining resources. Less people is a good thing – only economists think otherwise. The ecology and environment can’t withstand billions of people consuming like Americans.