A peculiar feature of the West over the last half century or so is the sudden decline in church attendance among Christians. In some parts of Europe, church attendance has declined into the single digits. France and Belgium have church attendance rates of around ten percent and it is mostly among the old. Estonia is at two percent, which makes it the least religious country in Europe, at least until they invite in enough Muslims. Even in the United States, religiosity is in steep decline, especially outside the South.
These declines have not been uniform. Quebec, for example, had high church attendance rates until fairly recent. They also had a relatively high fertility rate. Then all of a sudden, both went into steep decline. Similarly, Poland had very high church attendance rates, even under the yoke of communism, but then it started to fall. As in Quebec, this recent drop in church attendance is with the young and corresponds to a drop in fertility. As David Goldman observed, all over the world, religiosity and fertility follow the same path.
One assumed cause is social cycle theory, where a society goes through a process of birth, life and death, with falling fertility and religiosity in the late phases. Another explanation is that one causes the other. That is, when women get jobs instead of getting pregnant, church attendance falls. Alternatively, the drop in church attendance causes a drop in fertility, as other traditional modes of life also decline. Still others argue that multiculturalism crowds out both religion and normal family life, causing the decline of both.
A better, less popular explanation for both the decline of religion and the drop in fertility is the spread of what we call capitalism. In the two examples of Quebec and Poland, the drop in fertility and religiosity both coincided with their inclusion into the global economy starting in the 1990’s. Quebec was not communist, but somewhat disconnected from the emerging global economy, until the independence movement was defeated. One result of that process was the greater integration of Quebec into the global economy.
Poland, of course, was in the Soviet Bloc until the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was then quickly and suddenly integrated into the emerging global economy. Poland joined the West and then stopped going to church and stopped making babies. Polish church attendance dropped from 80% to 40% in a generation. The fertility rate in 1980 was 3.0 and by 2000 it had dropped to 1.37. The opening of Poland to capitalism and the global economy corresponded with the closing of Polish churches and the Polish womb.
If you think about the nature of capitalism, in theory at least, and the nature of religion, it is not hard to see the conflict. Capitalism not only assumes certain things about people, it imposes them. The marketplace is a competition to attain informational asymmetry between the buyer and seller. The seller wants the buyer to over value the good or service, while the buyer wants the seller to undervalue his product or service. It is only in this way that either can expect to make a profit from the transaction.
In a system where the highest good is a profit, then all other considerations must be secondary. Lying, for example, is no longer strictly prohibited. The seller will no longer feel obligated to disclose everything to the buyer. The seller will exaggerate his claims about his product or service. Buyers, of course, will seek to lock in sellers into one way contracts based on information unknown the other seller. The marketplace, at its most basic level, is a game of liar’s poker, where all sides hope to fool the other.
Religion, in contrast, also assumes certain things about people, but seeks to mitigate and ameliorate them. Generally speaking, religion assumes the imperfection of man and sees that imperfection as the root cause of human suffering. While those imperfections cannot be eliminated, the negative effects can be reduced through moral codes, contemplation and the full understanding of one’s nature. Religions, outside of some extreme cults, are not about altering the nature of man, but rather the acceptance of it.
Further, religion is a closed system, while the marketplace must be open. In order to be in the sect, one has to adopt a certain lifestyle and a certain set of beliefs. Most of all, the person has to be accepted by the other members. The marketplace, in theory, is open to everyone and the participants cannot exclude new entries. An ethos based on extreme openness cannot peacefully coexist with a system based on exclusivity. Not only has religion died in the West, but so have social organizations like fraternal orders.
Now, to be precise, what we call capitalism is closer to what prior age would have called corporatism or even fascism. The West is not living in an age of free markets and open competition. Instead, it is in a period of tightly controlled markets that are ruled by state protected oligopolists. Finance is controlled by a relatively small number of major banks and technology is run by a handful of global giants. Healthcare is a government controlled monopoly. The neo-liberal order is a global public-private partnership.
Since this arrangement lacks natural legitimacy, libertarians have been brought in to create a civic religion based around worship of the marketplace. It is why otherwise sensible people can support internet censorship by “private” entities. People have been condition to accept whatever private business does as morally legitimate. This new religion in support of the neo-liberal order, like all secular religions, is covetous and intolerant. It has to anathematize and marginalize any alternative religion.
The rise of this new fusion of capital and state authority, centered in Washington, does track with the decline of religion, fertility and local institutions. Whether you call it globalism, neo-liberalism or neo-conservatism, all of these terms describe the same system of rule by a corporate-government partnership. It is hostile to religion, both explicitly and implicitly, particularity Christianity. Faith in the marketplace is inimical to faith in God. When man loses that, he loses the will to go on and fertility rates plummet.
Capitalism as a system were buyer and seller lie to each other, is accurate only in the case of two people who never have to deal with each other again. But markets consist of many participants who by their own desire to trade will undercut the bad high offer or low bid. It self corrects, and if that alone were not enough, it beats the alternative of each of us stealing the other guys stuff
It only self corrects in high trust societies. It has not self coreected in China, a notorious bandit culture.
Go to China and try to sell rice for a five dollars per pound. You’ll feel the correction immeadiatly.
You said:
Because, after all, clergymen almost never lie.
Unless, of course, you count Catholic pedophile priests (and the bishops who covered up for them), mainline Protestant clergymen who systematically lie about what they actually believe (see Rev. Jack Good’s The Dishonest Church), the fundamentalists preachers who lie about almost everything (I remember the preacher at the church my family attended)…
Despite the MSM/s tendency to cover up for these guys, anyone who has been awake for the last forty years could give example after example.
I agree with you on the unfortunate presence today of crony capitalism, but, even so, the churches seem to be worse.
In this case, the ref will have to give the call to the free-market fundamentalists over the religious ones.
Most of these changes could be related to sex and reliable birth control. When one can have sex without procreation, the “need” to get married early disappears. Once they get use to serial monogamy or whatever arrangement, the inertia works against marriage and kids. It is also hard to reconcile this lifestyle with church, so people just quit going.
Correlation does not equal causation.
I didn’t leave the church (ELCA Lutheran) it left me. The left destroys everything
There is an excellent essay on capitalism at The Agonist. It describes how modern capitalism destroys all the bonds that hold us together (religion being a part).
“The stable family structure based on traditional sexual identities—in generation-to-generation transmission of heritage, embedded within a larger community—must be broken down and reconstructed into the image of Homo-Neoliberal Man, of whom the homosexual—childless, self-determined and autonomous—is the ideal archetype.”
The Great Pozzining the *goal* of unfettered capitalism.
It may seem like changes are happening rapidly, but we may still be living in the world Nietzsche foretold in part – after the Christian God could no longer provide a common worldview and value system for the West (damned Enlightenment!), a multitude of new competing secular religions sprung up because, as Ed Dutton says, 80% of people have the “religious gene” and if there is no handy ubiquitous religion available, they will join up with libertarians, identitarians, socialists, narcissists, instagrammers, fascists, conservatives, etc.
I think what Nietzsche wouldn’t have seen is that, for Islam, God is still not dead, and He is still very interested in mankind, and He has a billion devoted followers to impose His will on the rest of us, the godless Infidels.
I recently watched an attractive and childless 30-ish female YouTuber interview Ed Dutton, and after his solidly supported prediction of doom for the West, she asked what people like her could do to stem the tide towards declining intelligence and dwindling fertility and I said out loud to the screen, “You’re a beautiful and intelligent young(ish) white woman – get off YouTube and get on your back – replace yourself, Woman!”
When I go into the office, I have a short trip on a train. The number of dour but relatively attractive (not fat) young women being pressed into the service of mammon makes me angrier and angrier every time I take the ride. I want to shout and scream at them…
No, no, you have it wrong; they are liberated! Free to be corporate drones and #3 on some alpha’s boot call list. Far better than nurturing her children in a home she runs with a man who flatters her body every night. Obviously.
Huh. Was reading this just yesterday:
“It is understandable why post hoc stories about religion as adaptation are popular, even among well-informed people. Intelligence is not a good predictor of having sensible views where political matters are concerned, since politics is about group loyalty more than anything else. Adaptive stories about religion seem to appeal an awful lot to European traditionalist-nationalists who are hoping to use Christianity as the conduit for some kind of renewed ethnocentrism to uplift the European spirit. The Chinese do not seem to need it, oddly enough. Nor even the Czechs, much closer to home. It did not work for Rome, and it sure as fuck won’t for us.”
https://altleft.com/2019/04/28/unrealistic-adaptations/
The religion of Julian was prettty much completely lost when he tried to get it back. Christianity is not yet lost.
Maybe “crony capitalism”, but the competition is supposed to be between buyers or between sellers, not between the two. A seller offers a good or service at a price. The buyer accepts it or finds a different seller. If a seller isn’t getting enough sales, he can lower the prices – there is a value to maximize profit. Too high and people will go elsewhere, too low and you don’t make enough, the rest is helped by heterogeneious things like delivery, packaging, service, return policies, etc.
That can only work in a high trust society. Generally there is no haggling. It is the imports that wish to haggle and are often surprised that the listed price isn’t negotiable.
Also “capitalism” also occurred earlier in our history – the Indistrial revolution comes to mind, and the time between the wars, etc. and morals and religion didn’t collapse.
The problem seems that religion itself collapsed. Before it was a choice between heaven and hell, hope and despair. Today, it is prosperity preachers, and all dogs go to heaven. Beyond that, no demands – see Contraception, which the Catholic church hasn’t changed, but the priests have. (I think I would add Ireland to your list – they just made abortion legal and elected a gay prime minister).
Beyond that, the root is probably the feminization of men. The closest correlation of whether someone goes to church today is if their father went to church. The head of the family. Make it some kind of equal thing, make it for careers or emotional fulfillment insead of children, and marriage loses its sacramental, life-giving meaning.
Make it some kind of equal thing, make it for careers or emotional fulfillment insead of children, and marriage loses its sacramental, life-giving meaning.
A loving commitment to a husband or wife has no “sacramental, life-giving meaning”? I guess for you individuals are just production machinery, for producing offspring.
Well, yes GD, that’s exactly the reason and history of marriage—the production and raising of children. All societies, no matter how primitive, have a form of marriage. The similarities all revolve around children and their upbringing. Without such, the society would in short order cease. Every other benefit is secondary. Yes, marriage can form certain legal and economic benefits for a couple, but that was always the case—even outside of marriage. It’s the children.
In other words, someone who does not want to have kids should not get married. Is that what you’re saying?
No. If children are not your thing, you need *not* get married. However, I recognize that marriage is a shortcut to a legal arrangement (contract) which provides certain rights and safeguards to both parties in the arrangement (as well as children if they arrive). Such safeguards would require a lot of language and agreement between two individuals intent on working outside of “marriage” and perhaps would not transfer from State to State or outside the country. So I can see “marriage” as being a convenient way to reach a contractual agreement.
None of the above negates that marriage was historically developed by the State with the primary purpose to assure a proper continuance of the population. People die off, the State continues sort of thing.
Marriage is innate to human biology – all societies have some form of it, either 1:M man-woman, or 1:1 man-woman.
1:1 marriage provides a large number of civilizational benefits – less attractive men getting a mate typically means less violence.
Marriage cannot be simply a State contract since it existed far before contracts were enforceable by the State. Marriages were how civilizations maintained themselves, hence why the celebrations of marriage in traditional cultures are typically very long and involved.
The advent of ‘free love’ that has showed up on the scene recently is the herald of the death of civilization, as we return to 1:M ‘marriages’.
The “free love” thing lasted only about 3 years, ’68-71. You can imagine why it didn’t last long.
Um… have you been alive the past 40 years? No-Fault Divorce *is* free love.
Christianity is a fine as far as religions are concerned, and I know many fine, outstanding Christians. There may be a lot to recommend it.
However, I have three fundamental issues with Christianity. First, its refusal to recognize the concept of individual self-ownership in the Randian/Rothbardian context. This concept of self-ownership has been the foundation of my self-identity and worldview since my teen years. I simply cannot and will not except any “meme” that does not recognize this principle. Second, along with this is the failure of Christianity (and all other religions) to differentiate between negative and positive rights (and implying legitimacy to the latter). Thirdly, Christianity, although not to the extent of Islam or other religions) has a history of direct or tacit inhibition of productive accomplishment (I consider the Tower of Babel tale to be an example of this is rhetoric).
Your mileage may vary.
The worship of the self – ‘self-ownership’ – is the most common religion practiced today. Someone who is focused on their ‘self-ownership’ will not sacrifice for the family, the community, or the nation. Such a person has no place in a society where sacrifice is required (all human societies). A modern military of self-owned individuals would shatter against backwards mountain folk with a sense of nation (tribe) and purpose (we’re getting there in Afghanistan).
This is why people hate libertarians (and why Ayn Rand sells so well to teenagers, who worship the self). I was there once too. Being hit with the reality stick a few times should help to change your view…
“So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem; also my wisdom remained with me. Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”
The purpose of a military is to kill large numbers of “the enemy”. Let’s just say I can think of more efficient methods of killing large numbers of “the enemy” that do not require me to join any military, and we can leave it at that.
Let me give you a hint. Everything in this universe is about doing stuff, task accomplishment. If I want to do a fusion power start-up, I will work with a certain group of people. If I want to develop the bio-engineering to cure aging, I work with another group of people. If I want to go paramotoring, I would go with a third group of people, which may or may not overlap with the other two groups of people. You associate with others depending on what you do. That’s it! There is nothing more to it than that.
You seem to want me to be a “part of the group” even when we have no common objectives in life. I see no reason to believe this.
To be clear, in your magical world there is no such thing as family or friends.
I’ve got my friends. The difference between them and you is that they respect my long-term life objectives rather than criticize and judge them. Let me give you a hint. A true friend offers moral and emotional support in your pursuit of life objectives. If they don’t, they’re known as “fair weather” friends.
So… “A true friend is a tool to be used in furtherance of my objectives.” Modernism at its finest.
I’ve already responded to you far to much than you deserve. Cure yourself of the brain virus. Your life is *not* your own. You do not exist in a vacuum. You are part of a nation and a family. If you cannot sacrifice for the good of your people, or at *least* sublimate your desires and turn them to the good of the group, then you *will* be cast out. It’s simple human biology – we are social animals, not individuals.
I think we’re talking past each other. I did not say that I “use” other people to further my personal objectives. I don’t believe in using other people. What I meant is that a true friend will encourage you in your endeavors. Say I started a new business in nanotechnology, or I got that VP of Sales “dream” job that required me to relocate to Singapore. A true friend would say “right on, go for it, dude!” and would encourage me to do these pursuits. A true friend would not try to discourage me from these pursuits unless they thought I had a high chance of failure.
I tried to find a pdf I wrote a couple of years ago on this issue but could not find it. So, I will sum it up here.
In short, all of the myriad misfortunes that can befall a person fall into four and only four categories: medical, financial, legal, and being a crime victim. A person has less chance of experiencing any of these events in a libertarian society than in any other kind of society. More importantly, a libertarian society offers more options enabling one to overcome any of such misfortunes than any other kind of system. This argument alone makes libertarianism superior to any other system. As someone who has experienced both bio-medical and financial issues in the past, I have come to believe very strongly that this argument alone invalidates the morality of any non-libertarian system.
I believe very strongly that any social economic system that inhibits individual self-empowerment to be inherently evil, plain and simple.
Your Libertarian society exists only in your head. It does not exist in the real world. No society has ever even approached your theoretical Libertarian ideal. Nor, given Libertarians ideas about how to accomplish such a society, will it ever exist. As such, you remind me of a Physics professor who continuously discussed “frictionless planes” in his examples on motion and computation of speed.
Based on my personal experiences, I stand by my previous point. If I could find the pdf I mentioned previously, I would post here so that you would get the point. I think you’re not getting the context of the argument.
BTW, the group identity thing has never worked out for me. I tried it starting in high school. I found that I have the “Groucho Marx” problem with it. The groups I wanted to join would not have a thing to do with me and I would never join the groups that would have me.
Religion has never worked for me either.
I don’t suppose you’ve tried looking inward to see how you’re relating to people? Maybe stop trying to be the smartest one in the room, shut up and listen for awhile. You might learn something. It’s a hard skill, especially for folks on the higher end of the IQ spectrum.
https://voxday.blogspot.com/2019/03/mailvox-getting-past-gamma.html
Its not about pretending to be the smartest guy in the rooms. Its about being in that room when you could be out doing something else.
Globalism != capitalism
Head-exploding post, Z Man. Surely blasphemy to many a good American Capitalist. Thank you.
A better, less popular explanation for both the decline of religion and the drop in fertility is the spread of what we call capitalism.
Better word than “capitalism” is “materialism.” More to the point, worship of the wrong god.
Something occurred to me while reading the various anecdotes you described as a relatively common theme. It isn’t whether falling birthrates begat lower religiosity or vice-versa, nor is it whether increasing capitalism begat decreasing religiosity as the phenomenon appears to peculiarly afflict the nominally “Christian” people.
Increasing globalism causes decreasing birthrates and decreasing religiosity. It is merely coincidence that globalism has been nominally capitalist in the past 75 years as it was through American hegemony that the globalism spread. Twenty-five years prior it could have easily been Bolshevism. Twenty-five years from now it could be Han communism. Or Russian Orthodox oligarchies.
The spread of globalism is predicated on the destruction of nationalism. Quebecois independence was a nationalist movement as they are a distinct people, a distinct nation, from English Canadians. Without a nation of their own people they already saw their people was dying and lost incentive to foster either new generations or the institutions that defined their culture and separated them as a people.
Look to Hungary as an exception to prove the rule. They’ve taken steps to end mass migration and have increased their birthrate. As they reject globalism to put their own Nation first the people respond by renewing the nation.
First of all, religion has not “died.” And it’s not going to. That’s a simple overstatement. But we know what you mean.
Second, excellent article, as always. Hard as it is for me to believe, I am going to quote Noam Chomsky. Not quote, but paraphrase, I guess. Anyway, he said some years ago that capitalism, being about profit alone and nothing else, is profoundly anti-human and would therefore always forcefully support things like political correctness in all its incarnations. And he was right.
Third, there is another explanation for the decline (which is by no means the first of its kind in human history), one involving the activation or “switching-on and -off” of genes:
https://www.biohistory.org/
There was a long period of time when the U.S. was pretty much capitalist and pretty much Christian, with high church attendance. I think this is a problem for the thesis of this article. In spite of that, interesting reading as always.
There were no computers than and automation was in its infancy.
The first time the US went low fertility was in the 30’s and funny enough, we had entered modernity .
As for the 50’s , we were socially democratic at the time with a demand bubble do to WW2 . Its not the same
Problem is, everybody knows the marketplace is real while Christianity demands belief in supposedly historical tales that could not possibly be true. In the age of science, faith in the existence of invisible gods who live in the sky is hard for most intelligent people.
What Christian gods live in the sky?? Not the unmoved mover of Aquinas, surely. Maybe the silly god of the American rapture-awaiting fundamentalist snake handler. Your midwittery is showing.
I love “anti”theists. They insist on arguing about religious beliefs, of which they have not the slightest formal knowledge of.
Low birthrate is natural mechanism of purging bad genes and weirdos out. In current climate only strongest of us reproduce. Does anybody really want more liberals ????
That would only be true if we didn’t have welfare, especially WIC. The only people multiplying have either the very best genes, about 5% of the population at most and the complete trash of society, that should absolutely not be replicating. It’s mostly imbeciles from Chiapas that are pushing strollers right now.
Normal gene white people would kick Chiapas out. Or better never let them in like big family born boomers.
Z Man;
If by ‘capitalism’ you mean the deification of ‘the marketplace’* in place of God, then you might well have a point about its malign influence on fertility. But Christianity is not anti-business or anti-market per se.** The First Testament, in particular, has a lot to say about the proper regulation of markets (e.g. no false weights and measures) but does not condemn them. It condemns *cheating* in the marketplace and makes it part of Godly rulers’ duties to police it.
One striking thing about the discussion here is that many commenters seem to take the idea that Christianity is just another ideology. If God is real, and I think He is, and He means it when he says ‘Children are a blessing from the Lord’ then rejecting Him is rejecting the blessings He would otherwise bestow on us.
________________________________
*The besetting sin of the Libertarian heresy: A direct violation of the 1st Commandment among its many other faults that you are right to point out.
**Even interest is not condemned. For example, In Jesus’ parable of the ten talents, the King (pretty clearly representing God) condemns the fearful/lazy servant for hiding his talent in the ground instead of putting it out at interest so that the King could have the increase.
The absurd trend of “prosperity theology” in Christianity is one of the most destructive things I’ve seen. It spread all over, like dandelions. It’s already not aging well. This country is one big self-help section of Barns and Noble that’s gone terribly wrong. It’s driving everyone mental. And it’s precisely because of the insertion of the perfectible man into Christianity generations ago.
JR;
Right you are, but ‘prosperity theology’ is nothing new. It’s a damnable heresy because it implies you can buy God’s favor, thus denying His Justice and Impartiality: I.e. God’s no different from some pagan god who is powerful, arbitrary, capricious, and greedy (just like your king on earth).
It likewise implies that lack of prosperity or having misfortune means you are a particularly bad sinner (and we are all sinners). It’s partially what The Book of Job is about. IOW, sometimes troubles are one’s own fault: But not always.
So many folks ignore one of the big points of Job – God seems to be even angrier with Job’s friends than with Job himself, since they keep telling Job he must’ve done something to anger God.
My summary on Job—derived from a Rabbi no less—is that: We (human beings) are meaningless in the Cosmic scheme of things; Justice, fairness and such are human concepts based on a limited/faulty understanding of the Universe; God is the only one great enough to understand the Universe; therefore Job concedes (the argument) by saying: “… therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.” and is forgiven.
My favorite book.
Chesterton had a great introduction to the book of Job as well.
Religion and children have something in common. Sacrifice. A firm belief in the future, and wanting to be part of it and pay a price to do so. With religion the real future begins after your death, an eternal one, that’s worth sacrifices in your life. With parenthood, you sacrifice your time and money for this child, who will be part of a future that you will never know.
Who would sacrifice for this society? What are we sacrificing for? So Starbucks can come out with a new latte next year? Today’s society isn’t worth sacrificing for. Most churches are just as broken as anything you would see in the secular world. Most of them are dead, just vapid idiots making felt collages. It’s not deep. It’s not about the eternal. You’re not transported to something timeless, you’re just in this same dead space in time. Societies die when no one is left to sacrifice for them. I don’t mourn our society. The people who made it what it was are dead. The people who have it now are mostly degenerate animals, unworthy of what they were given. And it will be taken from them, because the world is unkind to adult juveniles.
It was several (!) months ago when I read an Art of Manliness (great blog IMHO) post about how we’ve switched – under the relentless slowly-slowly pressure of the Left through the popular culture – from having a life built as a shared venture between a couple married early, and having marriage being the thing you do as a capstone after you’ve built your career as a single.
As to religion, I concur with most of the posters. I was an atheist* for many years; it was while my wife and I were seriously discussing children that my faith came back. Having that foundational core of values changes you. You start to see yourself NOT as an individual but as one link in the chain from the past to the future.
One other thing: we’re so wedded to STUFF – the car, the smartphone, the surround sound, etc., etc., etc. that we don’t realize how much we’re bleeding financially. But when we do the math we see, as another person pointed out, “Holy carp, I can’t afford a kid!”
We prioritize STUFF and ENTERTAINMENT over continuing that chain. Meanwhile, the muzrats are breeding like bacteria. The future belongs to those who reproduce! GO HUNGARY, as one example:
https://voiceofeurope.com/2019/05/nationalist-christian-hungary-is-thriving-rising-marriage-rates-falling-abortions-and-highest-birthrates-in-20-years/
Western Civilization is the greatest civilization to have ever existed; it needs to be preserved… it needs to be fought for.
A feeling for transcendence will reassert itself in humanity sooner or later. The sun still shines behind the clouds.
In The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival, Glubb notes that religion is strong in early/ascending empires but at the peak it weakens being replaced by Commerce (Capitalism) and decadence.
Near the end of the empires he observed, there was a resurgence of religion into those societies as they grasped for the values that once made them great…but it was too late. The Empire would soon cease to exist.
What’s this “decline of religion” everyone’s harping about?
Last time the Booby checked environmentalism, feminism, and multiculturalism are doing just fine.
Not to mention all the other spoiled white kids who dabble in Buddhism, except when it causes them any inconvenience, or demands sacrifice or humility.
What we’re seeing now is religion for the rich. The old religions demanded discipline, sacrifice, and humility. That was necessary for poor people trying to make their way in the world. And it all looks so silly to their spoiled-ass children and grandchildren, who see their new religions as exercises in moral superiority, narcissism, and snobbery.
Off topic: My prediction about the media recruiting defectors from the Alt-Right has been confirmed. They even threw in a mention of deradicalization. Time will tell if they whet her appetite for attention, or they leave her to rot.
https://twitter.com/ScottMGreer/status/1123765477883416577
https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=15977#comment-85516
https://t.co/7Q2qvZwfqu
Fwiw, I thought she was “odd” when I heard her interview with KMG Victoria 2 years ago.
The perfectability of man against and/or outside nature seems the assumption shared by all major post-Enlightenment worldviews, however they differ on the means to accomplish this impossibility.
The perfectibility of men is derived from the blank slate or tabula rasa. The tabula rasa is derived from the god of the Enlightenment, who is the SELF.
Instead of serving God, the Enlightenment serves the SELF (that is, the selfish biological impulses programmed by natural selection, which were adaptive in the Stone Age and they are maladaptive now). Therefore, it produces an atomistic society where everybody fights against everybody.
The different Enlightenment worldviews (classical liberalism, communism, political correctness) differ on the MEANS to serving the SELF. But the goal is the same.
Vegetius;
Yes. It’s truly amazing to see that The Depravity of Man, the Christian tenant with the absolute most historical evidence to back it up, is so blithely cast aside. Yet another example for the great Thomas Sowall’s capsulation of Progressivism: Throwing out what works in favor of what sounds good.
Just so long as we don’t go all the way to Total Depravity. The ‘elect’ are all busy inviting pedophiles and lesbians to preach in their reformed churches.
Proposition religions are ultimately no more viable than proposition nations. Universalist religions are particularly vulnerable to “market modernity” as they can’t be closed by definition. Anti-materialist religions will always be a tough sell in the material world. Christianity and Islam share both vulnerabilities. Both also depend on an elaborate faith and miracle-based theology that’s incredible in light of modern science. Judaism’s ethnocentric, materialist system that leaves theology more to the priestly caste and bonds the faithful through social and economic pressure has better weathered the storm of market modernity. While Jews are losing religious faith at a comparable rate to the other Abrahamic faiths, they’re maintaining in-group solidarity, moral and social cohesion much better than the universalist, “proposition” Peoples of the Book.
If our goal is to rekindle fertility and social cohesion, we need core beliefs which emphasize kin and tribal loyalty which are also compatible with living in this material, monetized, scientific world ala ethnic Judaism. It doesn’t require a new faith, but it does require reinterpretation and re-prioritization of our existing beliefs. Christianity and Islam are highly syncretic religions and both lived this long by fusing with pagan tribalism early on (See Russell’s “Gernanization of Early Medieval Christianity” for instance). If our primary goal is race-survival in the face of ennervating modernity, religious reinterpretation, if not outright reformation, is mandatory.
Note the materialism I espouse here isn’t about muh shekels. Its about biology and metaphysics, things like priestly celibacy, determinism, pacifism and “invite the world b/c Moses.” Loyalty to kin and tribe means putting economics in a subordinate role. I just don’t want us denying the reality of the world we live in or the needs of our flesh in ways that make faith into a suicide pact
Are there studies which break down the elements of religiosity related to fertility? I’ve seen sources correlating church-attendance with fertility but little else. I’m wondering what the “active ingredients” for fertility are within religion. Those are obviously the points I’d emphasize. As to social cohesion, there are certainly examples where intense faith has torn societies apart (the inconoclasm spasms, Reformation, etc). I’m not sure whether I’d prefer a society with religion at its center or periphery depending on those specifics.
That’s a good point, we need both spirituality and an understanding of cold, hard material reality to make progress. The universalist, immaterial worldview of modern Christianity (including, sadly, my own Catholic faith) has turned into a massive Achilles’ Heel for the West.
The spirit needs a vessel – and tribes, kin, and soil are some of the best vessels around.
I doubt any study would be possible. For starters, any study could only find correlation between fertility and x, unless you can create identical-looking congregations and teach them all the same doctrine, except for x, y, or z.
Second, how could you pinpoint the “active ingredients”? Some churches might teach every week that you need to be married and have kids to go to heaven. Others might only give leadership positions to men who are married with kids, giving families status and prestige. Others might have customs/institutions that push young adults into marriage and have lots of support for families, like a church-subsidized, coed college that kicks out those who have extra-marital sex. Maybe there’s some church left that says women are low-status and shouldn’t have a say in who they marry.
Or some combination.
Sociologists are creative enough to even ask questions beyond, “Why should women even have kids?”
Both also depend on an elaborate faith and miracle-based theology that’s incredible in light of modern science.
You are confusing a primitive, superstitious level of religion with its spiritual core. Institutions and rituals are helpful to some in their search for God, but blockages when they become ends in themselves. At deeper levels, there is no conflict between spirituality and science.
Per Derb, when taking the evening walk with the dear departed Toby, EVEN our dear math geek DERB had a favorite tree on that walk that he would pat!
The moment Z landed in St. Petersburg and set foot in a taxicab, the cab driver unnervingly reminded him of his grandfather, almost a greeting and welcome home from his ancient motherland. These are a reminder I loving call “the great mystery.” I don’t want to attribute them to space aliens, don’t want to dissect them, analyze and write books about them, don’t want to attribute them to God or Jesus or some other deity…..there is still mystery….just stop and enjoy it appreciate that that cannot be named….and go about your life a little more aware….
“EMILY: “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?”
STAGE MANAGER: “No. Saints and poets maybe…they do some.”
– Thornton Wilder, “Our Town”
2,000 years later, the “proposition religion” of Catholicism remains–and 5,000 years later, the “proposition religion” of Orthodox Judaism remains.
Next?
“Will to go” in the last sentence–is that a typo or am I just not parsing something?
Observing my own young adult kids and their friends, I see a couple of things. One is that the old diversions, cars, sports, and the pool halls/pinball parlors, were mostly hangouts for boys, and that the girls eventually pulled a lot of the boys away from all of that and into establishing households (and babies, and church attendance, and so on). The movies were a diversion for both sexes, but they also represented a platform for courtship (among other social behaviors). Most of that is gone now, and boys don’t have their own places and things, quite so much.
Two is that now the girls are college grads (beyond the “Mrs.” degree), and the diversions, such as video games and surfing the Net, are done by both sexes, and they are largely solitary things. There is a veneer of on-line socializing going on, but not much bonding. The kids are simply too busy doing all the things available to them, and not socialized into settling down and getting on with the traditional elements of being adults.
Low replacement rates and low church attendance are byproducts of this situation, IMO.
Yes, the United States had far more wide-open capitalism than today back in the 19th Century, and fertility was very high indeed. The Hasidim also have high birth rates, and are most certainly capitalist. Whatever it is in capitalism that suppresses fertility seems to be peculiar to modern capitalism, rather than the more traditional variety. There seems to be a synergy between capitalism and other factors in the modern world that have produced this situation.
The US was a nation of business owners and a frontier. Outside of cities there were a plethora of ways to make a lousy living and more than a few good ones too. There was demand for strong backs and strong minds and often farmland for the taking
Nowadays your job can be done with a machine or by some guy on Romania or Vietnam for much cheaper or by an immigrant for that matter
We don’t have a yeomanry and we don’t have serfs since you can’t fire serfs . We have e employees whose families future is determined by shot term profit and some algorithm
Its this classic efficiency trap, a few people own everything and automation and immigration lower wages wages get arbitraged down and you get a nearly half century fertility decline
It’s really says something when pre-WWII Polish peasants had a higher birthrate than their urban descendants. It says a lot about how terrible modern capitalism is. They did not have to contend with a modern market place and goods from all over the world. They did not have to put up with taxes, hordes of government officials and other parasites.
Compare the American worker of circa 1975 to one in 2019. The latter works more hours for less pay when adjusted for inflation, pays much more in taxes, has little to no job security, In terms of raw purchasing power he’s far behind the worker from 1975 The costs of goods back then was much lower. The worker from 1975, if he had a factory job could buy a home, support a wife and kids. Not today unless they make at least six figures and can make a long commute to work.
Life started going bad around 1985 when LBO’s, off-shoring and the Japanese dumping their goods into our markets to destroy our industries .All of these conspired gut our industrial and manufacturing sector and which in turn harmed the blue collar and middle-class whites employed by them.The final nail in the coffin was NAFTA.
Great, after Woke Govcorp locks us out of the financial system for our political views, God will reveal Himself to us in all His glory, and a heretofore unseen army of svelte, nubile tradgirls will spring out of the bushes directly into our arms. Eden awaits, gentlemen!
I, for one, am looking forward to all those Sears catalogue models from my junior high days to fall into my lap.
The Babe: YMMV, but I hear those sour grapes make lovely vinegar to wash down those blackpills. What alternative does a guy have – try to get a non-hambeast trad wife without shit I her face by trolling at an athiesm+ conference?
What time will that start?
According to RT the SEC had approved MasterCard to cut off Right Wingers from their system. If this gets traction then VISA and the banks are next and guys like Z who want to go public can kiss their a** goodbye.
No more Digital Gulag but a Economic Gulag where you are rendered penniless.
We all become Mennonites and live an actual trad life. TIL Mennonites like their guns.
I dunno, I think like constellations, or global warming you can connect dots into almost anything in your imagination. To my mind advances in science, communication and education have led to more critical thinking and people realize or believe they are finite creatures. There haven’t been any advances in religion….no demonstrable Miracles like walking on water, or parting great bodies of water with the wave of a hand lately, Thus many try to get the most out of the here and now…men and women both…with no “consequences” to scare them into “acting right” its up to the individual….they are either smart enough to see the value in adopting traditional religious values or not….is there a DEMONSTRABLE benefit to procreating? reduced to basics it is survival, then greed and hedonism….and then you die….how many species have come and gone? The effects of various stresses on populations- lemmings, predators whatever…is pretty well documented, how those stresses manifest themselves is as complicated as weather forecasting.
So like Becker (or Rank) postulate in Denial of Death, I think you either expend energy persuing the symbolic life of striving to defy Nature in a quest for some form of immortality, or resign yourself to A Life Well Lived….whatever that may be for You.
Then if you witness a Miracle, be that some Godlike thing, or the dicovery of parralel universes, other dimensions, or the mechanism of quantum entanglment (maybe all one in the same) you can correct course…no biggy….
I agree. And here I would add that oft quoted saw, that the problem is not so much a lack of belief in God for the disbeliever, but an insatiable need to replace such with a belief in all sorts of pernicious things.
Maybe Z is our generation’s Chesterton… an uncommon common man.
To trite.
Iran – a literal theocracy has had a similar collapse in fertility. As has China, Vietnam and Cuba. The last vestiges of official communism on earth.
Whatever is causing the decline is a global phenomenon and transcends “capitalism”.
Iran’s fertility level is climbing again after a reversal in policy by its government, which at one point called for a “20 million man army” created by a baby boom, but started to introduce sexual education programs in the 80s and 90s. Khamenei has changed the gov’s mind again and, because large swaths of the population see the Iranian theocracy as legitimate, they are actually going along with it.
Interestingly, Iran presents a case for how easily propagandized sexual education can be, as long as the recipient population is socially primed to accept the official narrative (perhaps because they see the government as an extension of God?).
Check your facts…
Iran had a population of ~20million just prior to the revolution of the mullahs; it went way up to ~70million in the ensuing 4 decades. The “collapse” of their birthrate is a very recent phenomenon, coinciding with a disillusionment with the terrors of islam.
Or people in the industrialized world have just reached social carrying capacity.
The difference between physical and social carrying capacity is that in social you may have shelter and calories but lacks civic participation of value and in physical, you aren’t eating
Both are required for humans to thrive.
The last couple of times the West overshot its capacity were the Black Death (too many people even for the complex feudal system to manage) and in early modernity with its colonies and mass executions
We are actually doing exactly the correct think in the developed world to prevent a catastrophe, less kids, less people over time stability
The problem is that the economic system market worship demands constant growth an so we get immigration
This is insane.
If we could wrest our society back from these nuts and make an economy that serves the people not capital without commie nonsense we could stabilize at a higher level for longer. Otherwise boom and probably Amish Paradise
A fix would require though heavy repatriation , 40-50 million or so and a lot of regulation with an occasional firing squad for financial criminals .
And yes I mean the later, capital never learns the arch example being the S&L crisis
After that near implosion of the banking system , many people went to prison, big fines were levied and the system was made more stable with regulation
Instead of learning from the mistakes, a couple of decades later , swarms of lobbyists undid everything and this flim flam contributed to the 2008 crisis.
The only deterrent when that much money is on the line is regular state executions of financial criminals right next to traitors and pedos
This will probably require a dictatorship though and a smart guy in charge.
I don’t know if we can get that.
…West overshot its capacity were the Black Death (too many people even for the complex feudal system to manage)…
Really? It was “overpopulation”? Not rats, totally inadequate sanitation systems, seriously inadequate personal sanitation…..
OK, then.
Yes overpopulation. If you have too many people sanitation issues are a far bigger problem than you might see otherwise
Also people were pretty clean in the 14th century outside of cities. It was the Middle Ages not the Dung Ages
The situation was exacerbated by the sudden climate shift to a little ice age and the repeated famines caused by same .
In the warm period, the land was at capacity with little surplus and when it got cold suddenly there were more people than the land could support.
So people were hungrier than normal and with lowered resistance to disease , fertile ground for a culling of between 1/3 and 1/2 of the population
Trade may have played a part in it as well as the rat fleas that are thought to have spread the plague were Asian in origin
Since we have similar conditions, if our systems should fail, we’d won’t do nearly as well. Medieval society couldn’t easily move goods or produce a huge surplus but it was robust and sustainable and a recovery could come quick enough
We won’t be so lucky.
Perhaps, but I’m for trite. Capitalism enables wealth, wealth enables Hedonism—a natural inclination in humans. Hedonism can basically be considered concern with maximizing pleasure. Raising children is not pleasurable, it takes time/resources away from practicing Hedonism. Reducing the number of children you have reduces this adverse effect.
Prior to the industrial revolution, children had some value as family economic units, plus they had a tendency to die off a lot, so you needed a large number of them. This is no longer the case. Today we have Social Security. 😉
The only exceptions to the above I see in modern, first world, nations are in family units heavily invested in religious activities/motivations where children are considered outside of their economic value, which is basically zero to most families, albeit not to the State.
Take Peru as a counter-example. They have very low income, but also a lower birth rate than the US when we had their level of income. More than wealth and hedonism is at work.
We have Social Security for now:
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/pension-crisis/will-social-security-exist-in-2021/
Once again MRV, the article dos not say what you imply. It says specifically that SSI will continue payouts, but at a reduced rate when the surplus runs out. This is by statute and currently estimated at this time to be about 75% of current payout.
Am wondering if this is a game of 52-card pickup, with multiple factors colliding leading to world decline in birthrate. As stated in threads above, we can recognize many cultural reasons for decline. This may sound a bit retrograde, but so many of the advances in modern society over the last 150 years may be leading to decline, and come with a price. Nothing is either/or….complex as always…unintended consequences.
Examples: Pesticides in us, can’t think of the word for the chemicals in plastics that mimic estrogen, absorbed into body and turns men into weedy Euro weenies and women into blobs. Birth control chemicals showing up in drinking water. As a water treatment operator, none of us liked working with fluoride as in the minutest of undetectable quantity PPB would etch glass windows. When I took a fluoride chemical delivery, would have to suit up and be near a spray-down station as that stuff would eat down to bone. Too much causes mottled teeth. The only reason we have fluoride it is a byproduct of the fertilizer industry and a Lefty market was created a few decades ago (save the children!) so tank cars of fluoride byproduct…used to be a waste product.. ship from the south to water treatment plants all around the country. Follow the money.
We haven’t even begun to discover the blessings and curse of, believe it or not, the electric light bulb and blue light past sundown. Thousands of years of Circadian rhythms are deep within us and they’re being jerked all around. Think how artificial it is to stay up for hours after the sun is down working with blue-spectrum artificial light. (I use Swanwick yellow filter glasses after sundown so my brain isn’t taking in blue spectrum from computer and thinking it’s morning—can sleep better) If lights out by 10, can lose weight quicker. Old journals from before gas lights documented that people usually went to sleep shortly after dark, then got up sometime between 11-1 and oddly enough dinked around an hour or two, then back to bed for second sleep until sun came up. Plus we eat crap, nothing like 150 years ago, wheat protein has been unrecognizably altered, we snack all the time and don’t give the body a few hours to rest from eating. Endless sound stimulus. And so on. Life is messy…. then we must muddle along.
https://www.biohistory.org/
It is the “western” elite, inimical to western people and religion in particular, which solves the puzzle. No characteristic of capitalism, communism, democracy, or oligarchy can be blamed for the neurosis of that ruling class.
Don’t underestimate, Z, the effect of “educating” women. Whenever a globalist wants to globalize a new victim, one of the first talking points is “female empowerment” and female education. Women busy on school and careers in their most fertile years will squander their youth, and become barren and bitter. A quick Google search will yield numerous articles about the inverse relationship between education level (generally that of the mother, as a dominant factor) and fertility rate.
Education, particularly the new college experience, makes a complete mockery of religion and morality. It is very, very hard to be religious or otherwise decent on a college campus, and that even goes for the nose, despite the best efforts of their elders. College outside of the STEM fields is an absurd Dionysian experience that leaves few unscathed, and has destroyed many lives.
Good observation Tacitus—a small addition however. The negative effect you speak of has nothing to do with STEM (or non-STEM) per se. A STEM major is a proxy for high IQ and conscientiousness.
Prior to WWII and the GI Bill, we had something like 6% of folk who went to college. Now that’s low—but not entirely off the mark wrt how many folk should be in post secondary education.
A rigorous STEM course of study requires an IQ somewhere around 120 give or take. 10% of the country are at that level, but 40%+ last I read are attending post secondary Ed. What gives? I even heard a news blurb a few weeks ago that the Millennials are now the most “educated” (read credentialed) generation ever produced with 60%+ having some sort of post secondary degree (I assume Community Colleges play into this).
Obviously we have numbers of folks attending college that take up studies in weak or fake fields due to their academic limitations. Folk who are of limited IQ/conscientiousness majoring in non-demanding fields have a lot of time to debauch themselves at the tax payers’ expense.
I write this not as a dis of non STEM fields. One of the highest IQ’s sampled for faculty and grad students is in the discipline of Philosophy. We need good folk majoring in all legitimate fields of study. But that is a limited number all totaled—probably no more than 15-20% of the population—not 40%+.
Compsci:
I agree with most of what you said, it is your last statement that I take exception to (for which I will give my reasons).
First, even though it is indiscreet, I was a (multiple) STEM major that culminated in a master’s in your name. Yes, absolutely there is a filter on the stem fields of intelligence. Physics is (in my opinion) the single hardest major at a university. That has an inoculating effect, especially when coupled with the tendency of those types to be narrow-but-deep interest spergs who don’t want distractions. These majors require a serious commitment outside of class which takes away from debauchery and degeneracy. In short, it is not simple why they have remained largely immune (although computer science is the first to fall, largely by amateur female programmers who get the beta males to do their projects for them). They are also almost exclusively male (though that has likely changed in the last decade), providing a rare male only space. I had several classes, such as quantum mechanics, where there was no estrogen, quite refreshing. It is also coincidentally well known as a “weed-out” class.
That said, I actually prefer history and philosophy when it comes to pleasure reading, hence the name. Philosophy as a field of study in universities is largely non existent, in the wake of the sodomite Foucault. It now exists as a system for learning the various schools of thought, framed under the worldview of neoliberalism. At least that was my experience taking a few classes. It in practice is a pipeline to become a lawyer. Then there is the insane level of nonsense that has dominated the field, with the faculty promoting it excluding dissenters. It is very unlikely that someone can major in one of these fields without some level of indoctrination, for the simple fact that they won’t know much beyond what they were taught and have very little life experience.
History, philosophy, even psychology are important for men to know, however these live in the realm of the qualitative, as opposed to the quantitied STEM world. There is no “right” answer, and there is an entire discipline in philosophy, metaphysics, that by definition is unanswerable (which mathematics ties into beautifully through Godel). Too many people abrogate their critical thinking faculty, and rely solely on the interpretation of others. Most of what I “know” about philosophy (things I’m pretty sure I “know that I know”) is the result of thinking about things on my own, either after having read something stimulating or having independently made an observation through the art of living.
The summary of my point is that if men on the right wish to study these qualitative fields, it should be largely self study under the careful guidance of their own critical thinking. Be careful to not get tangled in the spiders web…
Tacitus, not sure I follow you so I can’t disagree with specifics. My post is meant to speak to statistical averages, standards of education, and the numbers of folk within a first world country (such as the USA once was) who can meet such standards.
When higher ed maintained its standard of rigor it meant that only a certain percentage of the population could meet those standards in the classroom, hence the bulk of the population was not accepted into the university. We have an idea of that percentage as I’ve stated. More than that number of individuals being accepted—and even graduating—indicates one of two things has happened: folks get in over their heads and flunk out, or standards in the disciplines have declined.
We have statistics indicating *both* are happening as the universities are practicing tuition farming and applying ideological blinkers wrt student ability. In short, educational rigor is declining.
That the STEM fields are being corrupted now does not change the fact that STEM fields are the last bastion of rigor in a rather dismal picture of higher ed.
I am not an elitist, really. The conclusion I often leave out for brevity is that no one wins when standards decline. The students—all of them, even the high functioning graduates—lose when their degrees become worth less in a marketplace saturated with poorly educated—but equally credentialed individuals.
The economy loses out when debt laden students either default on their loans or spend the bulk of their prime earning years paying back loans rather than spending their money in the economy or saving for their retirement.
Society loses out when an incompetent rises to a dangerous level in a technical field, whether that’s an engineer or technical manager—example, the current Boeing 737 fiasco. Or it spends its resources funding Higher Education while ignoring the need for competent tradesmen in numerous fields not requiring an advanced academic degree.
It is disappointing to read that so many here seem to believe fertility and population increase are unalloyed improvement.
When you believe fertility is a value in itself, regardless of context, you are playing the corporate capitalist sucker’s game. The corporations aren’t out to see you lower your birth rate — they’re happy for you spawning like crazy. More customers. More demand for limited resources they can sell you.
Life on an overpopulated planet won’t be a free person’s dream.
No one here is arguing for greater non-White fertility. Fertility is a value relative to that of other tribes. Only K-selected Whites & East Asians give a damn about “overpopulation.” If we get zerg-rushed out of existence by R-selected Obubus & Pajeets, nothing will ever be done to meaningfully limit population.
No one here was arguing for greater non-White fertility, but until your comment no one was arguing against it. Of course population limitation for “Obubus & Pajeets” should be the priority, but if Whites assert their right to breed to infinity, how can they morally deny brownskins the same right?
Through various legal, economic, and cultural pressures we can discourage non-White fertility. We aren’t going to get away with population stabilization for them but not us.
I agree. Where the relative numbers of racial poulations are more important short to mid-term than the overall, we need a multi-front approach. If we have means to limit out-group overpopulation, we should use them. Pushing feminism and atheism for non-Whites are soft-power options. Norplant-style reversible sterilization for public dependents is a hard-power option long overdue.
I take your point, but strongly suspect that a world entirely brown and black would solve the problem of overpopulation in a few decades. It takes a nontrivial core of brains, technical ability, and integrity to keep running a complex society capable of producing sufficient food and other resources to support the population we have today.
A capitalist who encourages fertility won’t get a bonus at the end of the year.
Fertility rate and population increase are not identical. As another commenter pointed out, it isn’t whites or East Asians leading the population spike (anymore). There is a serious demographic crisis brewing due to the rate at which the decline is projected to occur.
European people need to start having more children, or any. Children are the means through which tradition and culture are propagated organically. The ones who do have children are the lower fitness individuals responding to a very broken incentive structure. The ones not having children are generally higher fitness (intelligence). This will lead to a massive dysgenic effect, and many in these circles already see that happening.
Beyond the need to create a literal future for our people, creating families is of paramount importance to restoring moral order. When a female takes on the role of a wife, she becomes a woman; when she has a child, she becomes a mother. Likewise with men, but to a lesser extent. Mothers (who aren’t single) are overall more conservative than single and childless women by a wide margin, and that is not incidental. Biology is asserting itself through a natural role: they now have “skin in the game” wrt the future of their nation in the form of her child.
A graceful contraction in population (getting rid of foreigners would be a great step) can still occur when you have a majority of women forming families and having 1-2 children. Instead we have an increasing amount having none, and a small subset having the most, with the state as guarantor.
I grew up hearing how education prevented brainwashing. Look past the typical leftist projection and you see how their “education” institutions are 90% brainwashing. Even if you think religious instruction is also brainwashing, at least it doesn’t create crazed, blue-haired, tackle-faced, cat ladies.
First time I’ve heard “tackle-faced”. Gonna steal that one.
All species that experience high predation (or more generally, existential threat) are incentivized to reproduce in larger numbers in order to continue to exist. And this proclivity gets wired into DNA. Conversely, the extinction of existential threat (or more generally, the culling of the diseased or adversely mutated) leads to insidious genetic deterioration, which ultimately manifests as a fertility decline or colony collapse. Therefore, it may not be that capitalism per se is the culprit, but rather it’s handmaidens; affluence-driven extinction of hardship and culling.
Tom, good observation.
From the early days of the industrial revolution up until late in the 1800s the most affluent produced the most children.
Yes, there are many structural problems with the way capitalism has evolved, but there are also other forces at work:symbiotic in-group relationships have decayed into destructive competition, outsiders have accelerated this trend(they didn’t start it but they have made things worse, a lot worse), the inversion of the natural order of being: biology>culture>institutions>politics>economics have been completely inverted.
You’re spot on about the tempering that hardship performs…something we’re already getting a taste of and should expect a lot more of in the near future.
Great post, as the previous one. I think you have a part of the story. Capitalism makes obtaining money as the supreme value so it is in conflict with religious values. But democracy is also a very open system, where no opinion is better than another opinion, so we have to count to make a decision. Both go against religion.
In addition, as ConservativeFred says, it is not that the culture is open and, therefore, against religion (which is closed). It is that the culture is promoting an anti-religious ideology (liberalism), because this ideology is a tool to obtain power.
Even in capitalist countries, fertility does remain high among those most religious: Traditional Catholics, Fundamentalist Protestants, Orthodox Jews, orthodox Eastern Orthodox, fanatical Muslims, the most religious Mormons. They keys are, first, convincing young women to get married, stay married and have a lot of babies; second, to convince young men to marry the women and stay married to them. Third, for a religious group to support these young families above all with reasons to live such a life no matter what.
My grandparents lived in an ethnic neighborhood in a big city; life revolved around the parish church and school: 11 kids total Paternal+Maternal. 1920s-1950s.
My parents started out in the same ethnic neighborhood in the same city around the same parish church and school: 4 kids, 30+ nieces and nephews. 1950s-1970s.
I was born into the same ethnic neighborhood and went to the same parish church and school. We moved to the burbs when I was in Junior High School.Vibrancy chased out almost everyone over a 15 year period (1 square mile of European Catholics who had built and inhabited that neighbor since the 1850s and were sill 90%+ in 1965, were all but gone by the late 80s). It’s Squatemala today.
My siblings and my 30+ 1st cousins are spread far and wide. 6 out of more than 30 managed to more than reproduced themselves.We meet at weddings and funerals. Our kids are complete strangers.
Our kids, X-ers to Z-ers, (~40ish total) have produced fewer than 10 grandchildren so far. I’m not sure of this number because many of us have drifted apart.
Capitalism created those early urban communities and then was later used to destroyed them…by an “invisible hand”.
Rosa Luxemburg and Ayn Rand were two peas in a pod: same goal, different approach.
I had a somewhat similar experience. My parents moved from the old megapolis ethnic neighborhood to a small town in the Upper Midwest in the early 1970’s. I think they saw the rising vibrancy and decided to leave before putting down their roots. Grandparents #1 held on a for a few years before selling and moving to a nondescript suburb. Grandparents #2 stayed in the same house until the late 1980’s. Visiting them was a 3d world experience (they were only mugged 3 times with 2 hospitalizations).
In 2000 my sister was married in the old family church. It was technically closed, but still in use for special functions while the diocese determined what to do with dozens of abandoned catholic churches. My grandmother #2 was on the roll as a parishioner and she made a nice donation to the diocese so we had the church for the day.
What a sad experiencing wandering the magnificent structure realizing you lost something you never quite knew. I had not been to the church in over 12 years, and finally saw it through the eyes of an adult. The church dated from the 1870’s and had a number of renovations over the years, the magnificent stained glass windows, the beautiful guiding, and the statuary . . . the parishioners devoted their time and treasure confident that it would be preserved for their grandchildren.
Sadly, what few grandchildren there are; and they are now scattered to the winds.
I almost want to drive a couple hours to Megapolis and show my children that church, but it would be a museum for them. As for me, it would only anger me, as it serves a reminder of my lost inheritance.
Do it anyway. introduce your children to that part of their past. DO IT.
Agree, do it. Don’t let the bastards have the last word. Take the chance. Kids might think you an old fogey….but just perhaps in time, they’ll remember.
I went online and confirmed the parish and church are officially closed. I am not sure we could get inside without permission. All we would be doing at this point is driving by the edifice. Maybe some day . . .
The loss of the care and treasures they put into those old churches for generations is depressing. Like the great churches of Europe our families invested in beauty they assumed would last for ages. And now they are closed off or overrun by savages.
Yves—good example and sad to hear for your family. Brings to mind Robert Putnam/Bowling Alone, reviewed by Derb. If I remember correctly, Putnam thoroughly documented and demonstrated the corrosive effects of multiculturalism on our communities, the destruction of trust. Putnam could not give name to the obvious and danced all around to avoid saying the name multiculturalism.
My state of Utah is experiencing explosive growth. With the high tech jobs in Salt Lake and boomers, younger retirees and workers leaving other states to come here, you cannot get the transplants to admit many are escaping the decline of their old neighborhoods. When I left Martinez (Joe DiMaggio’s home town-can you get more All American than that), California, in 2011, I was the VP of the 100 unit HOA and watched the cultural decline. The apartments across the street had gone multi-vibrancy and white trailer druggie types, who non-stop hopped our fence and were found partying and trashing big time the pool area, more vandalism, changing locks, leading to an increase in HOA rates that normie blinkered residents couldn’t understand why the rate increase. The month I left, the first cars were slim jimmed and stolen from in front of garages. I couldn’t get out fast enough.
As an aside, this weird greenie love affair with nature’s critters is colliding in the suburbs. When I was a kid growing up in the hills just west of Danville, there was no such thing as flocks of wild turkeys, herds of wild pigs damaging suburban neighborhoods. The wild pigs are now destroying landscaping in the Wine Country, and all over Northern Cal. I was hiking in Sunol Park, saw a wild pig advancing down the trail toward me, and this Range Front Fault scrambled up an oak tree so fast would make your head spin. The big pig was a sow and wasn’t interested in tangling with a gal up a tree. Saw a flock of over 100 wild turkeys in a culdesac in Blackhawk very wealthy area and the turkeys were eating/digging up all landscaping. Before I left the old Martinez townhome, the turkeys had taken up residence. Told the HOA board we’d better set aside some $ for trapping the buggers, but got blown off as they were “so cute!” Turkeys and pigs destroy landscaping to rival the bombing of Dresden, including small craters! Death by a thousand cuts.
My favorite is hearing the blame for housing prices doubling and pricing the young out of a house pinned on the high Utah birth rate and those darn mormons breeding too much.
Ha! Bad news from Mormon World. This last Christmas neighbors exchanging gifts changed the pattern and turned a defined corner. Received only one batch of baked goods. Most LDS women work full time now. They gave foam hand soap, bar soap, candles, boxes of cocoa, and tellingly…a box of brownie mix with a little poem attached paraphased “I’m stressed. Here’s a box of brownie mix. Bake it yourself!” Watch LDS fertility rate begin to go down also.
Economic pressures certainly exist to push people away from traditional family life. And sadly, LDS people often bow to them.
I have a friend who converted to the Mormon faith and married a Mormon girl 10 years ago in SLC. Around 5 years ago they moved to a smaller Mormon community in Wyoming. Cal-Pozz had infected The I-15 corridor
Indeedski!
It’s the lefties from the SF Bay Area moving into Salt Lake corridor, and retirees (often squishy left) from Las Vegas moving into southern Utah. Lesbian mayor of Salt Lake….points the direction Utah is going.
RFF: similar story, but we Escaped Dodge to a bit further east. If you think pigs and turkeys are a pest, get some coyotes and mountain lions.
Actually, we did! We just about lost our old boy cat yesterday as he appears to have had a run-in with a “ferocious woodland creature.” He came within seconds of being chomped on. He’s a wee bit dusted up, but still squirting gallons of adrenaline and very overwrought. He’s our gay son who pumps iron then freaks out with lots of arm waving and talking about it. Either a coyote, or that red fox that goes hunting by, a bobcat or a waddlie but fast badger! Metaphore: The girl cat who leads with her nose took one wiff of Ollie’s fur and smelled whoever attacked him, then she roared and landed on him in full fight shrieking mode. Scared the total crap out of the little guy again! Women! As I write this, little guy is curled up against me, nattering on in a worn out sort of way.
Well, I’m out West. Problem is not the rattle snakes, coyotes, cougars, javelina and what else, but the people also moving here. At night the coyotes call and yip in the wash behind the house and it would wake the dead, but hey, it’s Nature. Sometimes the dogs get at the pigs, you sew up the dogs and toss the pig carcass. Sometimes the coyotes get at the dogs—buy a bigger dog next time. It’s Nature, but tell the neighbors that. They keep asking for the Game and Fish folk to remove the native wildlife. Mostly it’s the wives. Annoying at best.
Friend of ours has two Ridgebacks. Fantastic dogs.
Yes they are. I’ve had three. Few years back, when they were younger, they use to go out into the field with the group looking for IA’s at the border. They’re big and stand-offish. Never had a problem with illegals in the field. They get some respect. Border patrol uses dogs selected for abilities, such as tracking. Fine, but you don’t get much respect having a great big Lab romping up and down the trail. 😉
I’ve spent the last almost 40 years years living in your old haunts after leaving the East. I live a 10 minute walk from the DiMaggio Bros. playground in North Beach.
The entire Bay Area is pozzed central. It’s even dug it’s claws into the Sierra Foothills, has worked its ways up to Ukiah and down to route 152.
Unfortunately what happened to my family over a few generation happened to millions of families in every urban setting and it is still going on. Any white community no matter how far off the beaten path is being targeted.
We’re at a critical pivot point. I want to believe we will get together and do what needs to be done.
I wish you luck and fortitude.
Yves….wish you luck and fortitude squared! I can visualize the areas you describe. Miss North Beach Pizza, exploring Chinatown, don’t miss people crap and psychotic crazies. The DiMaggio family haunt is closer to the delta in Martinez along the Carquinez Strait. The DiMaggio Bakery is still in operation on Main Street in Martinez, an old Italian fishing village.
Yes, the whole state is pozzed. That’s why I abandoned ship and set sail for Utah. Would have gone north, but too much snow for too long. At 5,600 ft, we’re a half-hour from snow line and a walk in high desert and 25 degrees cooler than Vegas.
The rot is everywhere. The trajectory of the decline is depressing. Am not very hopeful so don’t look to me to be Singin’ in the Rain, well…sometimes. However, as mentioned previously, the world is a great mystery and the future is not locked in. Those pesky White Swan or Gray Swan or Black Swan events can change the course of history, and I don’t mean shit storms…sometimes positive changes in direction can happen, and we don’t see them coming. Life isn’t locked up except the trajectory of my brain. Then I throw in a spanner and change the brain trajectory. We have a lot more to say in how we deal with reality than most people think. If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own!
Who paid for the vibrancy to take over that neighborhood?
It wasn’t “capitalism” that gave out all the money to the non-Europeans that occupied your families former neighborhood.
The invading hordes sure as hell couldn’t have afforded to buy into that neighborhood without “help”.
What happened in 1965?
Fun fact: Since about 1999 or 2000, the fertility rate in the LDS church has been decreasing. In the 90’s, the tone changed from parents and families held up as examples and praised to lonely old maids who keep on coming to church, to now where homosexuals who keep the faith are praised. Families are still encouraged, but aren’t given status over the childless, singles, or gays.
I see a lot of unmarried women in my church who want to be married and have kids, but were told to wait for the very best and pushed into a career. I know a lot of guys with acceptable jobs who want to get married and have kids, but can’t get the time of day from entitled girls. Eighteen to twenty year olds who marry are mocked.
How do you expect people to marry and have lots of kids if you publicly praise old maids and gays while telling single girls they can have it all?
Chances are if you trace back to who is promoting this suicide juice you will find the answer. My guess there are some closet “progressives” at the top pushing it..
If anything it looks like the LDS has been infested with the same sorts of people at the top that helped kill off a lot a protestant denominations by promoting a Lefty agenda. First it seems harmless enough but slowly they start changing more and more. Promoting more lefties into positions of power and then boom!! the church dies because people leave.
As I have written before, the church became more members outside the US in the 90’s. Largest membership outside in Mexico and Brazil with temples up and down Central and South America. These people pay tithing. Their politics are Marxist to Marxist-lite. The church 1) knows which side the bread is buttered, and 2) is desperate to keep tax exempt status. That translates to open borders and ignoring national sovereignty, and …when the 2nd Amendment assault ramps up, think this church will fall over and wet on itself…oops…I mean take a stand. They’ll opt for the side which grants them tax exempt status…the Imperial Capitol.
I can’t say you’re necessarily wrong, but I’d like to say it’s a little more nuanced than that. For BYU, that is 100% what you’ve described. Kevin Worthen is at the top of the school and is pushing everything to the Left.
As for the actual Church proper, there is pressure to poz from the liberal element of general membership, especially the bureaucrats, but whenever anyone asks the leadership, they will say something like, “Women’s primary mission is to have children.”
It appears to me that rather than signs of poz, the leadership thinks the gay agenda isn’t actually a threat to traditional families. Rather, homosexuality is a cross to be born and everyone needs to support them coming to Christ, instead of casting them out until they’ve shaped up. Everyone here will likely disagree with that, but it’s not a 100% shift leftward that some people argue it is.
Bob, of course it is nuances and 7 card stud. Additionally consider this book title just printed last month:
The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church
Book quote: “For a growing number of Millennials, the tensions between the Church’s conservative ideals and their generation’s commitment to individualism and pluralism prove too high, causing them to leave the faith-often experiencing deep personal anguish in the process. Those who remain within the fold are attempting to carefully balance the Church’s strong emphasis on the traditional family with their generation’s more inclusive definition that celebrates same-sex couples and women’s equality.” (catch the lefty spin to the language.)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0190885203/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1
The church hierarchy knows which side of their bread is buttered. These are no dummies. Money talks. As pews empty, we look like Europe. The young bodies are going away. Over half the church is vibrant. The young ones that stay have drunk the Millennial LGBT koolaid—why can’t we just all get along and love one another! We are all refugees now! The shift leftward is a gradient not a seismic shift for the folks would risk waking up. The LDS church is updating to keep butts in the pews in the US. I have generations of history with this church. Yes, they make nice people. Life is messy. Follow the money. I’m a Mark Steyn demographic bore. Follow the demographics. The power is shifting to the Marxist-lite bodies in countries outside the US. Look at the new appointees to the 70.
The younger generation is more progressive. But it certainly is not a majority. Most of my millennial friends at BYU weren’t progressive and are married with kids. It was 2013 before I met my first sjw (of only four) on campus. My Utah ward is mostly millennial renters and has progressives, but again, they’re not the majority. The boys in the scout troop in my ward (not long ago) in the east bay area (not Martinez, sadly) were vehemently anti-feminist, anti-anti-racist.
Bob….duly observed and well said. That is the current truth of the church.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like the church is pozzed. I tried to explain in a reply to Rod1963.
It is a gradient of pozz for the church to stay alive.
The pozz started with the Enlightenment ideas of the equality of man, so everyone is on the gradient.
>The seller wants the buyer to over value the good or service, while the buyer wants the seller to undervalue his product or service.
You’re wrong about the market. The market wants to bring together a person needs a shovel, but has a sack of potatoes with a person who has a shovel but needs a sack of potatoes.
Anything outside of that is caused by regulation of the market– always done by people who despise markets and want them to fail (for the best-sounding reasons).
My goodness. The brain virus if libertarianism is incurable for some.
No. I have overcome the brain virus of libertarianism. But to blame “the market” for the excesses of socialism is EXACTLY what their last 90 years of infiltrating education was for.
(Edit) Additional note: The conversion of the trader’s market to the liar’s market is also a factor of just mixing too many nations with too many competing goals.
No. This is wrong. You’re talking about something that does not exist. The magical market where the shovel maker meets the potato grower only exists in theory. In reality, the potato farmer put rocks in the middle of the sack and the shovel maker is lying about his shovels.
That’s always been the problem of libertarianism. they conflate theory with reality.
Every time you tell a buddy, “hey, come help me move this couch and I’ll give you $20” you are engaging in that mythical market.
Problems start when your wife steps in and says “but I need to get fresh flowers for the table, so pay him $15 and give me $5.”
Now, human nature means that the wife is always present… but nobody rational thinks that adding wives will solve the problem of wives. What needs to happen, on a society level, is society’s men need to spill something in the kitchen just before the transaction so the wives are busy while traders get on with the trading.
(This metaphor is without flaw)
So in your analogy the man needs to artificially control market participation? And we need to do this on a society scale?
Perhaps we could achieve this by placing rules on the market. Maybe we could call them “regulations”
Yeah, yeah “the market” solves everything. Been hearing that from RINO’s and Libbies for decades. But in reality it doesn’t exist, and what we have is a rigged system that favors the wealthy and powerful.
The wealthy and the powerful are only able to rig the system – thru government.
Yet according to A.B. Prosper – unless we let the government run shit – the private sector is full of waste and corruption.
Seriously – if this is the mindset of the people lurking here – we’re screwed. Feel like a must repeat for emphasis: I get the sense that all that’s going on here is a I’m watching a bunch of dis-affected lefties congregate to bitch about how their grand progressive project – has been taken over by the monkeys.
LOL
There are no Libertarian societies anywhere outside of a frontier but many with a functional and large state in the West and of a different sort on the East
What does this tell you?
The government can run things pretty well
examples it does charity cheap and better than anyone else could and often utilities
My home town had city power which was inexpensive, reliable and had enough surplus capital to scale up.
It went private and got expensive. What does that tell you
Same with private water.
The Feds basically brought modernity to Appalachia and much of the US, built an Interstate Highway that was the envy the world
The Feds made sure the air and water are clean and thanks to the EPA , rivers aren’t on fire. Its not perfect , that agency needs reformed but the government often as not is good at making sure messes are cleaned up
South Dakota even has a State bank which works fine. Many countries have them too and it works well.
The State cannot do everything of course
Things involving areas where consumer choice and competition is needed, they need to stay out of , things like food for example
Hell I have city water here in Cali and its stable, adds to the city budget and is much cheaper than they private water company
This was also the case when I had city power which despite the states onerous over regulation was still cheaper than private power,
Things that are natural monopolies , where you only need one like a power company often can be run pretty well by government and on the occasion they can’t? Privatize
In any case the Dissident Right isn’t Libertarian. Its authoritarian and generally knows there will be big government doing what we want or the other side will be running it
Libertarians can go hang out with the Left where they belong since those clowns are just corporate property leftists anyway
The “West” is pretty much universally covered with large states.
Which ones are actually “functional” ?
If they were functioning the way they were supposed to function – then we wouldn’t be here on this blog in the first place.
You apparently call what is going on these days “functional” – I call it thoroughly dysfunctional, again – when considered in the light of what is happening across MULTIPLE Western countries – and is driven BY THOSE GOVERNMENTS.
The government doesn’t run a single goddamn thing well in my experience, and unlike the private sector – when it runs out of control there’s no real mechanism to reign it in.
Again – if there was: we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place , because there would be no white replacement going on – which is driven by those in government.
Other than immigration issues and the multi cult every single State in Western and Northern Europe is functioning very well for clown world thank you. They have much lower early death rates of all types and good life expectancy , usually a bit higher than ours . White fertility is roughly comparable , at times a bit higher among Whites in Scandinavia
The caveat here, the UK doesn’t take burglary and home invasion seriously and thus have a lot more of it. The US even California tends to regard this is a very serious offense, multiple offenses are essentially a capital i.e can get life, crime . Not so in the UK . We are much better off there.
Southern and Eastern Europe has some issues but again is doing well enough, The worst cities there are better than most of our large cities and again health and life expectancy are higher
Its a bit poorer than we are but its pretty decent and is better off than many of the poorer States in the US
Economically, Western Europe has a per capita GDP around 80% or so if that of the US but with a much flatter distribution and is for the poor and working much better, for the middle and wealthy a bit worse
They also have a massively more robust nationalist Right than we do with such parties controlling Italy and Hungary which has no real left and in most nations a few election cycles from political power .
And yes nearly all of this is State driven. Libertarian economic ideas are bunk and only suitable for a lightly populated frontier though come to think of it, an awful lot of the yeomanry of the 19th century were given aid to run the Indians off the land and government land grants
This doesn’t mean that the US can become a full social democracy ala Europe like the Bernie Bros think , we may simply not be able to do this.
We certainly didn’t for the Native Americans and our attempts during the 60’s and 70’s re: Blacks were an unmitigated disaster . And of course the upcoming multi racial spoils state too
The net results of that failure well be a massive degradation in the quality of US life ,safety and opportunity though
Hopefully our inability to regulate won’t allow some lunatic with home genetic engineering to LARP at being Thanos but who knows
When I was a young apprentice, a wise old journeyman told me that the only thing wrong with this craft is that everyone’s a liar and a cheat. By which he meant that people will take shortcuts and claim to have done or checked things when they haven’t.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that applies not just to a specific building trade, but all areas of life. It’s a universal flaw of human nature that is only overcome with strict formal rules enforced strictly to the point of internalization and continuous oversight. It’s not a feature of “capitalism” or any other economic system.
As an aside, but relate to your comment, there are a couple of guys on YT who live in China and report from there on their observations. One episode was on building in China and the extraordinary bad workmanship and the deterioration of all those new shiny apartment buildings and skyscrapers. Scary and fascinating at the same time. I believe their channel is “advchina”.
These rules are why we have had safe air travel for years. Pilots must follow the checklists and rules. But now the old guard is retiring and vibrancy is taking over….
If everybody is a liar and a cheat – then why the hell do we want to have an organization standing over us that is weaponized and given free reign to force us to do whatever those who are running it want us to do?
Governments INEVITABLY are run by those who are the worst among us. Yet listening to the logic of people like A.B. Prosper – we should welcome that kind of societal organization.
Sorry – I’m old enough to remember the Soviet Union, Chinese commies killing people by the tens of millions, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Kent State – and whole host of other government run enterprises.
Voting and democracy never reigned that shit in. Just as voting and democracy are not reigning in the great replacement and the attacks against whites that are going on now.
This is exactly why I say that the denizens of this comment section come off as a bunch of dis-affected left wing turds. Their arguments sound like progressive BS from the early 20th century , whining about workers being taken advantage by industrialists.
If you don’t like Google – shut off your phone dummy.
Show me a mountain you can run to , to escape government agents. Randy Weaver tried – and they still showed at his door and SHOT his family.
All I have to do to get rid of Google, Twitter, Facebook – and all the rest of them – is turn my damn computer off and leave my phone at home.
Worse, Libertarians ignore reality. When you ignore reality, you can not adjust your model. Hence when the model falls short, they simply ignore the problem and continue to wander in fantasy land.
It’s impolite to continuously refer to me as a libertarian when I specifically said I had overcome the mind virus.
What I am seeing more and more on the right-wing side of things is– as always– a determination to be “democrats lite.” I.E. If they promise a lot of socialism, the right counters with– less socialism.
What this is convincing me of is that the progressives are perhaps the only people smart enough to actually run the world. They Trump’d you– they threatened you with so much socialism that your defense mechanism is to accept “a little socialism, as long as its not the Green New Deal.”
impolite? Well fuck off then! hahaha
Sunspot, I hear ya—but you must not be reading this group long enough. I was a card carrying Libertarian for over twenty-five years and it still stings when Z-man chides me. ;-). However, for the rest of your comment, folks here I believe are wise to the feckless faux conservatives who “conserve” only Leftist gains in the political sphere, rather than truly push back the clock.
Impoliteness is a terrible thing, which is why progressives should run the world.
That’s your point, right?
“That’s always been the problem of libertarianism. they conflate theory with reality.”
I’ve come to the conclusion that libertarians have never met actual people.
I think fundamentally Z has it nailed, most libertarians focus on the being able to smoke weed and pretending everything will be fine if everyone leaves everyone else alone and somehow never notice the absurdity of the Non-aggression Principle. The only way you get to be left alone to do your own thing is if they’re too scared to steal your stuff. The one thing they have got right is that taxation is theft.
If I had gunships in high orbit things would be a lot different, for sure.
I must disagree. Ebay couldn’t exist in a world such as you describe. The whole “I send you crap, you send me a rubber check” paradigm would have killed it off as a platform for ecommerce years ago. The majority of these transactions must be worthwhile. You would run out of suckers eventually.
The amount of scams of ebay are only limited by the absolutely *massive* effort that ebay goes to weed out scams. I get two calls a day on my cell phone from folks that want to talk about a problem with my credit card or auto warranty.
LOL.
When I read things like this I realize that there are no real solutions being offered here on these pages – and that my suspicion that most of the denizens here are nothing more than dis-affected lefties who are butthurt that the POC are horning in on their free shit party – is probably right on the mark.
The market exists.
If you’re going to claim that it doesn’t – you had damn well come up with a better explanation than just sounding like some progressive from 1910 bitching about how capitalism is screwing the people.
“In reality the potato grower puts rocks in the sacks and the the shovel maker is lying about his shovels”
You sounds like a fucking commie or a leftie progressive from the early 1900s
LOL.
Yet your bullshit is belied by the success of Ebay,
It’s the perfect example of an invitation for fraud: you send me crap and I send you a bad check and for a brief couple of months a facilitator class willing to guarantee both sides of the transaction for a 10% fee appeared. They vanished because the West (and certainly the Anglo-Saxon West) is rightly a high trust society. Thing may of course be different among those from the Russian hell hole from which you hail.
Genes will out.
It’s not just a libertarian fallacy, but a paleocon one too. My husband, otherwise quite based, still parrots this fiction of the mythical, magical market. Our older son and I have tried every argument to make him realize it’s merely a theory disproven by human nature and reality, and he just retreats to muh government intervention – i.e. the real market economy just hasn’t been tried yet. Amazing which beliefs die hardest.
Sunspot, you’re talking about all of the great stuff that happens in the free market, but the “free market” doesn’t exist. Even you seem to acknowledge this when you blame socialism. Whether you call it socialism, crony capitalism, oligopoly, corporatism, or something else, that’s what actually exists – not the free market.
You give Sunspot too much credit. He (or she) doesn’t know what all those intermediate ‘isms’ refer to, any more than Sean Hannity does.
Any time you trade your buddy $20 for help moving a couch, you are engaging in the free market.
Any time you call your wife over and say “Honey? We can’t figure this out… will you help us decide how much money to trade and how we should move the couch” you are engaging all your isms.
Be a man, for God’s sake.
Your buddy helps you move the couch because he’s *your buddy*. If you have to pay someone $20 to help you move the couch, they’re not your buddy, they’re your employee.
Note – pizza and beer are not *payment*.
Do libertarians have any friends or just “fellow economic units”?
Obstacles and distraction effective enough to keep the fertile occupied until it’s too late. The recent spat of “climate emergencies” is just another example of the myriad of machinations hard at work (behind the scenes) being rubbed in our faces. Most effective, I must say.
Another factor influencing the positive correlation between traditional religion and fertility may lie in the nature of religious beliefs:
To the extent that a person believes it to be true, a belief in the existence of a benevolent loving God, who watches over you and has your best interests in mind— and who is guaranteed to prevail in the end— will naturally tend to produce an optimistic frame of mind in the believer. This effect will happen, regardless of whether the particular religious beliefs are in fact true; what’s important is that the believer believes them to be true.
It stands to reason that a couple who believes that ‘God is in charge and good will triumph in the end’ will be more willing to bring children into the world, than will folks who are secular atheists, or who subscribe to modern ‘religions’ such as climate change; which envision the possibility of a more ominous final outcome, and see the future as uncertain and problematic at best.
Good point. I hear in Cali all the time “why would you bring a kid into this world” etc. Kids are a bet on the future. However, TomA below (re: existential threats and birth rates) isn’t wrong either. If our social “scientists” weren’t so obsessed with bogeymen, we might get some hard numbers on how those two influences correlate or otherwise relate to fertility.
The old Norse had plenty of babies but they hardly had an optimistic world view. They have a gloomy afterlife Hel for most too which was basically Sheol . Well unless Varg Virkirness is onto something
An appreciation for ones people and culture and a stable way to live (in modern cities ) is what brings the babies not one religion or another
Problem there is our corporate leaders want us rootless amoral strivers like them
Hell I’ve seen them write freak out articles when people stop moving around chasing jobs because they need family nearby to get by saying we should subsidize people moving .
Culture comes from being rooted , babies come from culture and without roots, culture dies
Since rootless capitalism is ending fertility, its going to have to go and be replaced with a market economy that serves nations and people
Doing this will not be easy, the current people in charge considered ending all life in the Western hemisphere better than changing economic paradigms but they are getting weaker
Go populist, go rooted, save the West
This paradigm seems only hostile to the Christian religion. Seems the Jews and Mohammadans are getting along just swell. The Jews are making plenty of gelt and the Mohammadans are pumping out babies like they were manufacturing future bombers or something.
Perhaps we’ve reached that point where capitalism has procured the rope and now we’re on our own gallows.
Jewish fertility in the West is driven by the Hasidim, who are not the guys the anti-Semites lose sleep over. Regular Jews have a TFR approaching one and a collapsing synagogue attendance rate. Muslims in the West have a high TFR, for sure, but they explicitly reject the neo-liberal order.
So, the two groups at war with neo-liberalism, Hasidim and Muslims, have high fertility and religiosity.
Don’t forget to include the Amish.
They don’t reject capitalism and commerce per se,
but they do reject much of the modern society’s norms and behaviours.
All three of them.
They’re all building houses in the white suburbs near me.
What’s more, many fall for the siren’s call of the shiksa, increasingly in my observation, especially non-white, to seemingly improve their tolerance bonafides.
I know one that went for a shegetz/ shvartzeh combo platter.
Dear God.
Fun fact the more religious a Jew is, the more republican/conservative/right wing they vote world wide. There’s some weirdness about the state of Israel with Religious Zionism representing orthodox support for the state, and many orthodox groups who refuse to accept the legitimacy of the state (for entirely religious reasons) to this day.
Can confirm. All three children of one family of Right non-Orthodox Israelis I work with have out-married, all kids involved are far more liberal than their parents. I cite Jewish resistance to market modernity below, but the non-Orthodox are still suffering its effects, particularly in SoCal, even where the parents were Israeli-born and raised.
Also, the out marriage rates for Secular Jews is extremely high. 100 yrs ago the Jewish pop of the US was 3.1%, (full Jewish, non Mischling), today it is around 1.7%, with huge Mischling numbers included).
Other than the Orthos, they are getting more mixed by the day.
Only American Indians have higher outbreeding rates, which are astronomical, btw.
It wasn’t so long ago that Monty Python and the world joked about Catholic birth rates in the western (white) culture….
Catholics indeed had some of the highest TFR and some 3rd world communities of Catholics still do. The fall of Catholic TFR is aligned with the infiltration of the Church and the erosion of the traditional teachings, which not ironically leads to modernism which embraces Capitalism instead of God above all (as your article describes).
See my previous comment to Calsdad above to know the starting point when Christian values were undercut to humanism = modernism = capitalism…
Even as an agnostic, I can’t help but observe that the decline of traditional religiosity in our culture seems to have transformed many people into soulless zombies. The vast majority of humans are sheep and it is likely necessary to social functioning that they be sheep. They will follow a religion one way or another. They can follow a religion that provides them a larger metaphysical meaning and purpose with connection to the cosmos (Christianity) or they can follow a religion that reduces them to hollow economic units (Corporatism). It’s no surprise that the latter religion offers them little incentive to procreate. What’s the point of producing more hollow economic units?
Yep, I’ve mentioned before that I grew with zero religious teachings, though no antagonism toward religion either. But I’m slowly moving toward becoming more religious if only because it seems the only thing powerful enough to get white people off their ass and fight.
It worked during the Crusades.
No it didn’t at least as well as folks want to think
Crusaders spent a lot of time liberating cities in the Middle East, Outremer as they called it and preying on other Christians along the way
There were important exceptions that removed Islam from the West like the Battle of Vienna (and the Winged Hussars arrived duh duh duh duh duh duh) but the Crusades were far from the best thing that ever happened and if we go down that path again, its being in the Middle East forever and ever.
Our native religion is more about nature worship and shamanism, not the hair shirt madness of the eco freaks but a sense that the sacred is local and natural
Local is what matters., If your sacred place is a nearby spring you have incentive to protect it an no incentive to give a fig about the Middle East
We also have a plethora of our own Gods and yes Asatru or Hellenic Paganism is a bit LARPY right now, give it time and in a few generations it could be as real as Christianity
If that isn’t your cuppa, a more masculine and healthy form of Wicca , like Gardenerian with less sex cult and ceremonial magic fills the gap pretty well as it includes rituals, sacrifice ,ceremony and spirit
Its also a bit LARPY but again this can change and there are more than a few multi generation Wiccans . Many cannot be trusted because of that sex cult aspect but that’s easily fixed
I don’t know if this is ideal or who much mental oomph Wiccans have but the Odinists and some Asatru at leas have demonstrated a willingness to fight as well.
Add an actual religious mystery aspect to groups like the Soldiers of Odin , like a Mithraist group back in the day and you have your crusaders
Jordan Peterson has done a bunch of work on the origins, purpose and current applicability on religeon, particulary Christianity.
He’s got dozens of hours of Youtubes here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/JordanPetersonVideos
I’ve been downloading them, converting them to mp3’s and listening in the car,
Best stuff I’ve heard in a long time.
Go thou and do likewise.
Thar be Peterson bashers here.
I’ve done exactly what you are doing, the Maps lectures, the Genesis lectures, all of his podcasts, 12 Rules and starting MoM audiobook. That last one has me stopping and writing notes like mad. In the introduction to a book he wrote decades ago I found out why the Left Can’t Meme. And all of these clowns think he’s talking about politics. Only peripherally.
Peterson is the enemy of white identitarians. He also definitely will not name the Jew. But he does have his good points.
Oh, and also Peterson is a grifter.
whatever that means
I agree on all counts.
Peterson is theologically incompetent and mostly in way over his head. He *sounds* good, then 20 minutes later you say… wait, what did he actually *say*? He’s just another Shapiro – approved opposition.
There’s an excellent intellectual critique of Peterson here: http://theagonist.org/essays/2019/04/15/haywire-jordan-peterson-and-marie-mondo-self-help-for-last-men.html
I don’t have trouble following his lines of reasoning. Maybe I’m a grifter, too.
It’s not often I wish for someone to get ball cancer, but let’s just say Lil Benjy Shapiro are duking it out for the top spot.
I think the Muslims pushing militarily into Europe and stealing people off the coasts to sell as slaves was enough to cause the Crusades.
Embrace the power of “and”. One can start a crusade for worthy purpose, killing Saracen invaders and it can easily turn septic
In any case , keep Christianity and you keep parts of the West and its soul in the Middle East . Is the benefits worth the trouble ?
We’ll still need to be purposeful and ruthless in defense but the West can live without embracing a Jewish splinter religion and might even do better in this day and age.
To be fair the knights of St John, venetians and genoese all had large slave markets as well.
It saddens me when so many people slip into materialism – and I don’t just mean corporatist consumption, but actually seeing all the world’s problems as needing only a material solution to be resolved (“UBI will make people overdose on opiates less”). The West’s biggest war is spiritual, but besides crazy depressed millennials seeking ayahuasca treatments while humping through the Peruvian rainforest, I don’t see many people reconnecting with anything resembling a religious compass.
One exception: the dissident right is chock full of people with spiritual, in addition to material, motives. I wouldn’t underestimate the power of that alignment.
To a degree, I’ve found a religion of sorts: My people. I now view the world much differently than in the past. I’m part of something much larger than myself, something much more important than myself, something that was here long before I showed up and something that I hope will be here long after I’m gone.
Before I limited those feelings to my immediate family. Now they extend to my people. My material well-being – while not unimportant – is no longer a main focus. Whether I earn more money or my portfolio grows a bit means little if my people die out or are subjugated.
“Materialism” isn’t some flaw induced by the market and capitalism – it’s a natural function of being a living thing. There’s plenty of animals that are “materialistic” – within the confines of their species and their own ability.
Or maybe you haven’t seen the stories online about cats that steal things from the neighbors, birds that decorate their nests with all sorts of cast of human trash, monkeys that steal shit from tourists – or the squirrels that go all OCD with acorn storing – to the point where they fill up entire walls and cell antenna housings with acorns:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My7dBRVs7Cg
And all those stories are about *dysfunction*. Cats, monkeys, and squirrels that do those things are outside the bounds of normal behavior for those creatures. Many cases those behaviors will *prevent* successful reproduction, which is, after all, the goal of biological life.
Your analysis is flawed from the start. Animals act upon instinct and training by man. Man is separated from animals by the ability of reason and free will.
Animals cannot sin for the same reasons Martin Luther falsely reasoned “faith alone” (acts of good not needed) and that resulted with a paraphrase (some say quote) from him that “God loves a sinner so sin boldly”. “Faith alone” denies free will. But It is free will that allows man up to lift our actions above nature to God (the supernatural) and therefore elevate us above animals.
The submitting to excess material needs is akin to the fall of man.
Yes, we need material to live, but greed for it (valuing it it above all) is materialism.
Ephesians 6:12 KJV
“Soulless…..” Yup. Look, e.g., at Ralph Northam and Tony Evers, both (D), both Governors, and both very casual about post-birth abortion–infanticide to most of us.
But “soulless” also applies to many Vibrant Yout’s, to whom murder as revenge for “diss” is expected and ordinary.
These are two other expressions of the Complete Materialism worship.
Young nobles killed each other over disrespect in staggering numbers in the Elizabethan Era and violence was so endemic that sword schools were banned and rapier length regulated as well.
Parts of England banned weapons in cities
. Gang and other violence was common and lethal in the 19th century too
The reason this seems so odd is we’ve been spoiled by modernity and efficient policing . The historical norm is far different and once the state erodes enough, the norms return
There weren’t enough nobles for there to be “staggering” numbers of killings.
Cities in England of that era were not nearly as large or populous as modern cities.
This is significant exaggeration to the point of lying.
Its all about percentages and there were a lot of duels and lethal violence for such a small population.
Also violence among the commoners was also endemic,
This blog has some notes
https://jessnevins.com/blog/?p=89
Homicide rates in Elizabethan England were noticeably lower than those for the medieval centuries, but still far higher than contemporary figures. Spontaneous violence was still common among rural people…few of the killings investigated at assizes during this time resulted from calculated violence: ‘rather, they occurred during acts of sudden, unpremeditated aggression and results from attacks with a variety of knives and blunt instruments. Fatal quarrels could originate in almost any context–at work, in drink or at play.” Handguns, known as “pocket dags,” were in limited use by this time and about 7 percent of violent deaths involved firearms.
Not as bad as medieval times but still horrendous.
And note in that article the most violent city was Oxford, it uis generally thought to be mainly wealthy young men in university fighting duels
It was roughly 5x that of current Chicago
London had a homicide rate of 2.5x that of Chicago and there really was no class barrier
These days rich people don’t murder, Not so in the past.
The current system is openly hostile to religion, and not-so-subtly hostile to family formation. Consume any sort of media and within 2 minutes the mockery of religion is plain to even the lowest of the low IQ. As for family formation:
– Women in the work force – [sarcasm] all women must have careers.
– Student loans – [sarcasm] all people must have college degrees.
Listen to me whine. One of the most difficult days of my life occurred shortly after I was married. My wife and I had enormous student loans. One day I found myself in the children’ aisle at the grocery store. I was curious about the price of diapers and such, and realized, “crap, I cannot afford a child.” It took us 10 years to pay-down the loans to get to a position where we could have children.
In the current system, a family has to be earned, and most people do not want to work to build a family.
As a postscript, I fully admit that I was oversold the value of a college degree. I bought the story.
Even though I paid my loans in full, I completely advocate student loan forgiveness concurrent with the abolishment of student loans. Sand in the gears, sand in the gears . . .
The presidential candidate who runs on student loan forgiveness–a debt jubilee–will win in a landslide. Bet on it.
The Democrats won’t let him or her do that . No one like Bernie pr in the Social Democratic wing will be allowed into power till the rest of the old guard dies off. Normally this would be a good thing but a lot of the current Democrats are loons and worse believe their own B.S.
They could easily provoke a crisis the US can’t recover from
. Truth is if we got a slew of low to no immigration, pro gun Democrat who didn’t hate Whites and could be trusted on those basic issues and were willing to spend money for the public good, do debt jubilees and this like I’d never vote Republican again
I’d be all in favor of GOA/NRA Tulsi Gabbard say
To be honest I hate the Republican party for the most part since the wing of the party where I belong, Paleocon was banished by the Chamber of Commerce types
I hate the later so badly I’d nearly vote for Cortez over one of them . At least AOC want a better place for the people in it. The Chamber of Commerce are just oligarchs and looters
Largely agree but the Dems are currently worse on war,
We need a burning of the Republican party so that a genuine conservative party can rise from the ashes.
I agree with you here too.
The current western system is not particularly hostile toward mainstream or orthodox variants of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, etc. All of these religions are more or less given the same leeway by western nations that was once afforded to Christianity and, later in the post-enlightenment era, Judaism. The only instance to the contrary that I am aware of is the attempts at prohibiting circumcision in some of the Nordic countries, and to the best of my knowledge, none of them succeeded without making an exemption for religious reasons.
In case anyone missed it, it’s actually openly hostile to capitalism too. Who can forget Obutthole telling Joe The Plumber on how he never really built his own company.
I think ya got that one bass ackward Z. What you are talking about is crony capitalism… and the market will eventually correct that too.
“What you are talking about is crony capitalism… and the market will eventually correct that too.”
What an odd statement of faith.
Throughout my life I have seen systems defy “the market” and keep on truckin’. But I am to deny my lyin’ eyes and believe in your faith?
Can you give an example or two of “systems(?) defying the market and keep(ing) on trucking”?
Hoagie: sure, here are some examples. US sovereign debt, us student loans, us health insurance, us public pensions, japanese sovereign debt…. Etc. The system keeps alive that which the system needs in order for the system to survive. There is no God of the Market to save you and re-assert the “natural order.”
Good grief. The system did not force you to take student loans. Health insurance is a scam that exists in defiance of capitalism, and is the construct of socialists. Get a grip.
Well, you might consider that the future is never what anybody expects. Whatever it is will be a surprise to nearly everybody.
The boomer is strong with this one.
LOL. And I see the angry young cellar dwelling incel is doing well too. Part of the reason you little ones hate Friedman is that you can’t tell the difference between capitalists and socialists.
I’ve heard Z say that the old paradigm of left vs. right no longer applies. He’s only half right about that; those forces are still alive and well and they act on our leaders every day on the street level. He and you are being influenced by them every day… but as often as not you’ll ascribe the effects off to eeeeevil joos, the deep state, or now, Boomers. Contrary to our gracious and learned blog host – sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Do you youngsters still smoke cigars or do you all just light them under the table now?
Get off my lawn you little chits!
When the line was crossed and money and government suddenly shared the same DNA, the capitalist slide began. Fifteen years of world war and boom, fifteen years of depression and world war, and finally the present. Garrett said it best long ago–The shivering ghost that now inhabits the words laissez faire was once an unconquerable fighting spirit. It did not belong to capitalism. It belonged to liberty; and to this day its association with capitalism is valid only insofar as capitalism represents liberty.
Crony capitalism is redundant. Humans are biased by nature. “The market” is only an aggregate of biased people. The rise of Woke Capital shows if anything that Market God is dead.
J.S.;
What resets crony capitalism is *disruption*, not the ‘the market’. The crony capitalists know this at some level or other. That’s why they pay off the crooked pols to maintain ‘da fix’. The point of and value in ‘da fix’ is to deal with any potential economic disrupters (and other predatory pols) using purchased political power, not market innovation. Otherwise it would be a pointless waste of money. This situation can go on for years and usually does.
But what this situation ensures is that, when it comes, the disruption will be more destructive. It will be more destructive because it becomes ever more profitable to disrupt the status quo the longer ‘da fix’ is in. Simultaneously, the oligarchs become more stupid and entitled, hence sloppy.
Taxi medallions are a perfect example. Used to be worth millions. Along comes Uber and they lose 10X or 20X their value.
Applies to countries as well as companies. People talk about China having a static culture. Perhaps it looks that way on the surface, but every change of dynasty was a hostile take-over.
And then there’s this:
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/pension-crisis/will-social-security-exist-in-2021/
MVR, again read carefully. Payments reduced, not stopped in worse case. Not that SSI is not a Ponzi scheme and a poor way to “invest” for retirement, but as long as a work force generates new funds to be input, the boomers like me continue to get a monthly check.
Number pedant here.” Used to be worth millions. Along comes Uber and they lose 10X or 20X their value.”
Nope.
fred you should have had the kids and let them chase you for the debt. you can always pay later , but you cannot go back to the past and have the kids you missed. I speak from experience.
miforest – Student loans present an interesting dilemma because they are not dischargeable in bankruptcy and professional licenses can be suspended for non-payment. Good luck finding a job (or keeping a job in those circumstances). In other words, they have by the . . .
yeah nobody can afford the kids. You just have them and things will tend to work out
But that does piss me off. The naturally conservative will put off the kids. I see it in my own family. The lowest IQ Branch are having babies like crazy.