A large number of intelligent people are engaged in a rather dumb quest at the moment. Led by Elon Musk these people are convinced that far from overpopulation of the world being an issue that in fact humanity is facing a crisis of underpopulation. Charles Haywood goes as far to say
The population implosion is a separate civilizational problem, of existential importance.
What evidence Haywood and Musk present for this seems vague at best and I suspect stems from both their underlying concerns with ‘line must go up’ - a belief that can often be hard to shake. In the case of Haywood as an Orthodox Christian he may also have a religious agenda here. However their claims remain incredibly perplexing to me and others.
We have had far superior civilizations in the past with much smaller populations. This is just indisputable fact. My friend Montana Classical College stated this the best when he said:
The greatest people in human history (Athens) had fewer than 300,000 people
And another astute commenter added on:
Among who there were only 30,000 citizens. Know this, and weep.
Twitter quips aside about the ancient world we can look back to more recent history and observe that civilization continued along just fine with smaller numbers of people. Victorian Britain in 1901 was around 32 million people and produced some of the greatest civilizational accomplishments of all history.
Why then are so many concerned about the seething mass of humanity? I have often joked to my friends that Norman Borlaug will in fact be remembered eventually as one of history’s greatest villains. For those unfamiliar Borlaug was an agriculturalist who was involved in the ‘Green Revolution’. His practices and improvements to farming are credited with saving the lives of something like a billion people. Those same billion people of course being the Global South who now our school marm AWFLs say we must allow en-masse into our countries because of the threat of climate change.
As I said - his legacy might change in future years.
We live in an age of paradox - where obesity and malnutrition are commonly observed in the same family in parts of the developing world. An obese mother from cheap calories and a malnourished child. Sickly at both ends of the spectrum. This though is the inevitable outcome of a pursuit of birth rates as a whole. A warped and sickly mass of people that generate very little of worth or accomplishment. Looking back to the Victorian era you truly needed the guiding light of those people, that society pulling together to move towards something greater. Musk no doubt hopes to push towards Mars or something similar but he’s a lone voice amidst a thoroughly useless inward looking and corrupt elite.
Falling birth rates in our societies are a sign of sickness I am told, and in honesty I agree. Take Korea - collapsing rapidly. The birth rates collapse because the society is sick - the medicine to my mind is not to import foreigners en masse as our evil elites want but nor is it to make a futile attempt to encourage the Koreans to breed more. The Koreans who wish to see the future are already breeding - we are seeing a concentration of those who are healthy.
What will a society of those who chose to have kids amidst the sickness look like?
Is it possible they will in fact be healthier and produce a healthier society that stabilizes and perhaps grows in future generations?
That seems likely to me. Our societies are sick and it is normal for people to be lost and bloodlines to end, as tragic as that is the future is going to belong to those who survive past it.
Pro-natalists with recent conferences I have no issue with, they are attempting to encourage the like minded of our side to have kids and perhaps more kids. Noble. That being said the fear mongering of Musk and the like is perplexing even more when you consider the underlying other assumptions he and others have about where we are headed. Our western nations are awash with idiot immigrants, people too stupid to even work in our remaining industrial and physical jobs. Those jobs continue to be pressured by automation. Now combine the theories of those who see AI (basically white collar automation) coming and the squeeze on remaining jobs is going to get even worse.
Perhaps the pro-natalists like Musk are just afraid of saying the quiet part out loud: We want more white European people to have more babies. Instead they have to be vague and talk generically about a population implosion. If this is the case, and I am not convinced it is, then this would be disappointing. The window has been blown open for sometime and there is not a real need for this coded language. Perhaps then this is the only rhetorical device they can grasp at absent of faith? They want to reject the climate doomers encouraging people to end their bloodlines but lack anything better? That’s also disappointing - there is little emotional appeal in claiming we are facing an underpopulation crisis.
As alluded to before part of me strongly thinks this is a continuation of the current dogma. The pyramid scheme of pensions in Europe and housing prices driving wealth requires a growing population - even if you believe our evil rulers are trying to solve that with the mass migration they salivate over those people have no hope of propping up these crooked pillars of wealth. Who’s going to buy all the boomers second homes? If we have a population shrink won’t that make houses more affordable again? Line can’t keep going up if that happens! Perpetual growth in a finite system is a nightmare, as is the nightmare of ever crowded earth. Here you see an unusual connection between the pro-natalists and the weird bugmen who fantasize of stuffing everyone in hive cities.
The last argument made is the one that makes most sense but it too is still trapped in a misunderstanding of the zeitgeist. Those who say “If we have more kids they will import less foreigners”. That’s just not the case. Perhaps they began by importing the foreigners for their line go up game but soon their reasons became hatred of their own people. At this stage the anti-human ideology is entrenched deeply. Having more kids will not make our elites suddenly change their mind about the agenda they are so eagerly pursuing. What is dangerous is to continue to support the unfettered growth under misguided illusions that more is always better.