And what about big elephant in the room? - takeover by non human lifeforms. Whether evolutionary ( cyborgs, transhumanism, and symbiotic ai). Or adversarial. Either way that is what most likely scenario.
Its 2024. Gpt5 and maybe project Q is a reality. Human cultural evolution of past ages does not apply here
Personally I'm not worried about AI and such stuff. Since no one knows about the future it is a matter of taste I guess. If it stand between this-time-is-different and more-of-the-same, I tend to bet on the latter.
You’re channeling Paul Morland’s demographic trilemma: countries can only have two of three, strong economic growth, ethnic continuity, or a comfortable—child lite—lifestyle. I share your hopefulness that western societies can escape the trilemma via Scenario 4. I hope we don’t need to realize it in outer space. That would mean a radical pro-fertility tilt in our earthly culture. You have pointed to the challenges. Even what sound like generous government benefits tied to the number of children barely move the needle. They need to be increased and complemented by a highly progressive income tax schedule that tips the scales for young women in favor of marriage and child-rearing.
> If a total war starts, high-technology-low-fertility culture will be entirely sensible: In an intense war situation, young children are only a burden.
It's even worse than this. When two societies are thrown into direct competition, if one is stronger and has a lower growth rate, that one will always have an incentive to attack the other in order to prevent itself from being overrun in the end.
> My guess is scenario 4
This civilization doesn't know *how* to transition back to high-fertility. Glub, Quigley, and Turchin are probably individually wrong, but together they're also probably close. The way Western Civilization wants to solve all problems is with physics and chemistry, but its main problems are sociological, psychological, and biological. If America stumbles and submerges - even without setting off its nuclear arsenal - where will that leave the rest of the Western world?
You and Anders are probably the two people who most closely reflect what *we* are like, but you seem motivated by different ideas than we are. Maybe this means you, as tech-loving Westerners, have found some way or motivation to chart out a future for your entire civilization, but it doesn't seem as though you have. You say right away that:
> It is the second point, cultural evolution, that is being overlooked by most people who are discussing how to build a good society.
But you haven't seem to have done the work of understanding or building this, or to have joined some other group that has. Aren't you missing the same sociological / psychological foundations everyone else in the West is? Or am I misreading you and Anders?
>>It's even worse than this. When two societies are thrown into direct competition, if one is stronger and has a lower growth rate, that one will always have an incentive to attack the other in order to prevent itself from being overrun in the end.
You are right. It's not easy to be Israel.
>>The way Western Civilization wants to solve all problems is with physics and chemistry, but its main problems are sociological, psychological, and biological.
Exactly.
>>Maybe this means you, as tech-loving Westerners, have found some way or motivation to chart out a future for your entire civilization, but it doesn't seem as though you have.
I could say that we are very tentatively thinking about how to get started.
>>But you haven't seem to have done the work of understanding or building this, or to have joined some other group that has.
Tell me what group does understand and deal with cultural evolution!
>>Aren't you missing the same sociological / psychological foundations everyone else in the West is? Or am I misreading you and Anders?
I think we are trying to acknowledge and understand them. But we might be right at the beginning of doing so.
> Tell me what group does understand and deal with cultural evolution!
Sorry, Tove. You can either trust me or not.
> I think we are trying to acknowledge and understand them. But we might be right at the beginning of doing so.
I haven't addressed it much on my blog, but I *personally* have a large body of unpublished work on cultural differences that may assist you. Since you seem anxious to have answers and progress, I'll give you the quick, quick summary:
* "Individualism" in this specific sense entails a suite of values including rights for women, tolerance for homosexuality, civic participation ("I signed a petition"), support for democracy, concern for the environment, cosmopolitan acceptance of ethnic minorities and immigrants, and unconcern for group and survival values. Wokeness appears to be essentially ultrahigh individualism.
* Rising wealth & technology --> Rising Individualism. Example: "In the early 1960s, Taiwan entered a period of rapid economic growth and industrialization called the "Taiwan Miracle". In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the ROC transitioned from a one-party state under martial law to a multi-party democracy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
* Very low individualism = Stagnation. Low individualism depresses innovation; lack of innovation maintains a slow pace of change. (Example: Muslim and Asian countries show low innovation, with the notable exception of Japan, which has experienced strong increases to individualism since WWII.)
* Rising Individualism --> Increased technology and wealth, along with loss of concern for maintaining social cohesion, and rising immigration
* Other cultural dimensions also exist and have their own effects, e.g. "secularism" which is unrelated to individualism, and relates very strongly to national educational success and manufacturing, and is related to depressed fertility and polygyny, and increased abortion and suicide rates. But these other dimensions seem rather more stable than individualism, which is quite dynamic.
My level of certainty for some of this is not too high. On the other hand, my confidence in most other models is very low; I don't think most thinkers are getting anywhere without being aware of this.
I trust you! But possibly I don't understand you. When you mention groups, I most of all think of Malcolm and Simone Collins. They are the closest I can think of. Unfortunately I have serious problems with their writing style: They don't write for equals, but for people who think they know less than them and want to become convinced.
Otherwise, I think everything you write makes sense. Cultural differences, the way you describe them, have always interested me. Now I'm thinking more and more of what could be possible in reality. If I actually believe that the culture we are living in is going down, what to do about that? Find another, growing new culture? What new culture? Etc etc.
Science, for better or for worse, is always finding limits. Any time a discovery is made about what is and what can be, there's a logical implication about what else is not and what cannot be. The sociological trends I've been looking at are not laws as one finds in physics, but many of the relationships are very strong, or even dramatic, and they definitely suggest limits on what is possible.
For instance, I mentioned secular societies, before; such societies are overwhelmingly superstitious. When Americans picture a secular society, they imagine a society full of Richard Dawkins. In actuality what seems to happen as religion retreats is that people become rather agnostic and unpolarized about religion; and then they become somewhat pluralistic and ad hoc about religion; and then they believe in hauntings, parapsychology, and good luck charms, and develop a severe case of tetraphobia: https://people.howstuffworks.com/number-4-unlucky.htm#pt1
Even if these trends are just trends, when I think about the numerous failures people have had in the past to enforce new cultural norms from scratch, it seems as though humans really are bumping up against genuine laws - if not laws of nature, then laws about their *own* nature in the here and now. In general, what is even possible for humans may have already been very well explored throughout history.
This is where my personal interest in matrilineal cultures comes from. Holding individualism at a more modest level seems more stable and "healthy," but when families and clans become more important, unfortunately human breeding patterns tend to drift into unpleasant realms. Weak matriclans of extended family units centered around sisters sounds pretty good; no strict prohibitions against divorce, women still maintain a decent status, and so on.
Unfortunately I have a sense that even this may be a dead end - I'm starting to suspect that matrilineal cultures can only thrive when males are useless as family providers, and any value they have is to the community at large rather than to their offspring. This circumstance was pretty common in the neolithic when technology was so limited that males' main role was to share the meat they brought home and protect the group militarily... but in a complex modern society the idea that fathers wouldn't be able to significantly impact their children's prospects is pretty hard to imagine.
I think what you are talking about is enormously important: every discussion on what kind of society is desirable needs to be closely followed by a discussion on which society is possible.
Anthropologically speaking I'm a bit skeptical of your theory of matrilines and patrilines. Not because you are outrightly wrong. I just see too many exceptions from the rule that matrilineal kinship systems make women's position stronger. For example, the Tiwi hunter-gatherers of Australia was matrilineal. There, older men monopolized all women in polygynous unions. Men bought a wife through helping a mother raise her daughter from the time that daughter was a baby (annoyingly enough, the anthropologists studying the Tiwi didn't focus at all on this interesting arrangement). That way, older men who could command resources amassed wives in polygynous unions. Those wives tended to be more attracted to men their own age, which caused considerable strife within the group.
When you say “matrilineal”, I suppose you mean a family based on the female side with comparatively low paternity certainty. That kind of arrangement definitely exists. I just suspect that it needs a narrower description than “matrilineal societies”. But I can't say that I know which one.
Words aside, I'm probably a bit more positive than you about matrilineal/matrilocal/whatever culture. Basically, I'm part of a matrilocal arrangement myself: My family has bought my mother's land, where she still resides. And that is great for me. Lately I have been thinking a lot about the problem of too few good fathers. Whatever reactionary feminists say, things weren't that perfect in the mid-20th century either. There is a reason why feminists wanted to do away with marriage: A rather big proportion of all marriages were actually not that pleasant. I suspect the reason could be too many cads and too few dads in the population as a whole. Or maybe that only a minority of people are actually good at being married.
In any case, there is no paradise of happy marriages to go back to.
Although there were more marriages fifty years ago, I don't know how many more happy marriages there were. For that reason I'm loosely thinking of alternative arrangements for raising children for those who can't get themselves into marriages. Maybe the kind of matrilineal societies you are talking about could serve as inspiration here.
> I just see too many exceptions from the rule that matrilineal kinship systems make women's position stronger.
Too many for what? Too many for A) the rule to matter for the purpose of social engineering, or, too many for B) the rule to be true?
If it's A, any society, matrilineal, patrilineal, or otherwise, that lies nestled within a cosmopolitan bilineal society like Sweden will necessarily have an elevated position for women, since women will know that they can always defect outside if things get too bad inside. The Amish are notoriously difficult to enter and leave, but around 15% still leave ( https://www.amishbaskets.com/blogs/blog/how-many-amish-people-leave-the-community ).
If it's B, I can only say that this takes the same form as Anders' comment that "In China, wealthy regions might be overwhelmingly Han, but poor regions are also overwhelmingly Han." This was true, but it also gave rise to a type II error.
> When you say “matrilineal”, I suppose you mean a family based on the female side with comparatively low paternity certainty.
Again, my sense is not that paternity uncertainty is crucial - that's only one way for matriliny to work. Even if fathers know for certain their wives' children are related to them, they still may be indifferent to that if they have no ability to affect their children's reproductive success. This is the case in communities where male labor is fully communal, as they work together to hunt, build houses, and fight.
> There is a reason why feminists wanted to do away with marriage: A rather big proportion of all marriages were actually not that pleasant. I suspect the reason could be too many cads and too few dads in the population as a whole.
Well... I get that adolescence lasts forever. But there are as many terrible, spirit-crushing wives out there as there are cads, Tove.
> I'm loosely thinking of alternative arrangements for raising children for those who can't get themselves into marriages. Maybe the kind of matrilineal societies you are talking about could serve as inspiration here.
Mm. Another idea: I met an Indian couple whose marriage was arranged; they seem to think it works very well.
So, here's my pushback... I think for option 1, the better description is something like capitalist, materialist, or maybe even productivity-seeking. The current "high-tech" aspect is just a means to an end, as the technology improves the productivity to improve the material standard of living, in the direction set by the markets.
And because the direction is set through the markets, it is fairly easy and natural for this style to have majority support. The businesses are making what the people want, after all, to get their money. As we said in the Cold War, "Capitalism delivers the GOODS" - people got the things they wanted and this did make them happy (though of course it did not remove ALL the ways people can be unhappy.)
But I confess, I say this as a true believer! I embrace a beige global capitalist future - Starbucks everywhere I go. The most vexing counter-example I wrestle with is China's turn under Xi. They were chugging along wonderfully experiencing great improvements, but somehow this nationalist spirit was able to take hold even though it threatens to undermine their gains. Unrelatable, to me.
>>The current "high-tech" aspect is just a means to an end, as the technology improves the productivity to improve the material standard of living, in the direction set by the markets.
Yes. And no. High-tech is the means to produce what people want. But also the means for our society to defend itself militarily against its enemies, whoever that turns out to be.
As you say, capitalism is a very strong system because it gives people things they desire. But there are things that it doesn't give people too. Meaning, for example. Somehow a few populations, the Amish for example, manage to give people something that can compete with things they desire. Since those people also manage to have children, their culture seems stronger in the current environment.
Moreover, capitalism gives people what they desire, but not necessarily what makes them happier. People desire mobile phones as their 24 hour companions, and our culture has no way of saying "what you desire is not good".
I like many aspects of Western capitalism too. Too bad if they get crowded out by more viable cultures.
And what about big elephant in the room? - takeover by non human lifeforms. Whether evolutionary ( cyborgs, transhumanism, and symbiotic ai). Or adversarial. Either way that is what most likely scenario.
Its 2024. Gpt5 and maybe project Q is a reality. Human cultural evolution of past ages does not apply here
Personally I'm not worried about AI and such stuff. Since no one knows about the future it is a matter of taste I guess. If it stand between this-time-is-different and more-of-the-same, I tend to bet on the latter.
You’re channeling Paul Morland’s demographic trilemma: countries can only have two of three, strong economic growth, ethnic continuity, or a comfortable—child lite—lifestyle. I share your hopefulness that western societies can escape the trilemma via Scenario 4. I hope we don’t need to realize it in outer space. That would mean a radical pro-fertility tilt in our earthly culture. You have pointed to the challenges. Even what sound like generous government benefits tied to the number of children barely move the needle. They need to be increased and complemented by a highly progressive income tax schedule that tips the scales for young women in favor of marriage and child-rearing.
> If a total war starts, high-technology-low-fertility culture will be entirely sensible: In an intense war situation, young children are only a burden.
It's even worse than this. When two societies are thrown into direct competition, if one is stronger and has a lower growth rate, that one will always have an incentive to attack the other in order to prevent itself from being overrun in the end.
> My guess is scenario 4
This civilization doesn't know *how* to transition back to high-fertility. Glub, Quigley, and Turchin are probably individually wrong, but together they're also probably close. The way Western Civilization wants to solve all problems is with physics and chemistry, but its main problems are sociological, psychological, and biological. If America stumbles and submerges - even without setting off its nuclear arsenal - where will that leave the rest of the Western world?
You and Anders are probably the two people who most closely reflect what *we* are like, but you seem motivated by different ideas than we are. Maybe this means you, as tech-loving Westerners, have found some way or motivation to chart out a future for your entire civilization, but it doesn't seem as though you have. You say right away that:
> It is the second point, cultural evolution, that is being overlooked by most people who are discussing how to build a good society.
But you haven't seem to have done the work of understanding or building this, or to have joined some other group that has. Aren't you missing the same sociological / psychological foundations everyone else in the West is? Or am I misreading you and Anders?
>>It's even worse than this. When two societies are thrown into direct competition, if one is stronger and has a lower growth rate, that one will always have an incentive to attack the other in order to prevent itself from being overrun in the end.
You are right. It's not easy to be Israel.
>>The way Western Civilization wants to solve all problems is with physics and chemistry, but its main problems are sociological, psychological, and biological.
Exactly.
>>Maybe this means you, as tech-loving Westerners, have found some way or motivation to chart out a future for your entire civilization, but it doesn't seem as though you have.
I could say that we are very tentatively thinking about how to get started.
>>But you haven't seem to have done the work of understanding or building this, or to have joined some other group that has.
Tell me what group does understand and deal with cultural evolution!
>>Aren't you missing the same sociological / psychological foundations everyone else in the West is? Or am I misreading you and Anders?
I think we are trying to acknowledge and understand them. But we might be right at the beginning of doing so.
> Tell me what group does understand and deal with cultural evolution!
Sorry, Tove. You can either trust me or not.
> I think we are trying to acknowledge and understand them. But we might be right at the beginning of doing so.
I haven't addressed it much on my blog, but I *personally* have a large body of unpublished work on cultural differences that may assist you. Since you seem anxious to have answers and progress, I'll give you the quick, quick summary:
* Culture differs in multiple ways, but most critical for the current circumstances is individualism, which I've already discussed some here: https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/human-societies-across-the-world
* "Individualism" in this specific sense entails a suite of values including rights for women, tolerance for homosexuality, civic participation ("I signed a petition"), support for democracy, concern for the environment, cosmopolitan acceptance of ethnic minorities and immigrants, and unconcern for group and survival values. Wokeness appears to be essentially ultrahigh individualism.
* Rising wealth & technology --> Rising Individualism. Example: "In the early 1960s, Taiwan entered a period of rapid economic growth and industrialization called the "Taiwan Miracle". In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the ROC transitioned from a one-party state under martial law to a multi-party democracy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
* Very low individualism = Stagnation. Low individualism depresses innovation; lack of innovation maintains a slow pace of change. (Example: Muslim and Asian countries show low innovation, with the notable exception of Japan, which has experienced strong increases to individualism since WWII.)
* Individualism is also seen to delay adulthood, depress corruption, and reduce fertility. (Note that countries going through the "demographic transition" are essentially transitioning to higher individualism, and experience plummeting fertility. Or, see here, noting that "postmaterialism" is another term for individualism: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Relationship-between-the-mean-age-at-first-birth-and-the-Inglehart-index-of_fig2_45825913 )
* Rising Individualism --> Increased technology and wealth, along with loss of concern for maintaining social cohesion, and rising immigration
* Other cultural dimensions also exist and have their own effects, e.g. "secularism" which is unrelated to individualism, and relates very strongly to national educational success and manufacturing, and is related to depressed fertility and polygyny, and increased abortion and suicide rates. But these other dimensions seem rather more stable than individualism, which is quite dynamic.
My level of certainty for some of this is not too high. On the other hand, my confidence in most other models is very low; I don't think most thinkers are getting anywhere without being aware of this.
I trust you! But possibly I don't understand you. When you mention groups, I most of all think of Malcolm and Simone Collins. They are the closest I can think of. Unfortunately I have serious problems with their writing style: They don't write for equals, but for people who think they know less than them and want to become convinced.
Otherwise, I think everything you write makes sense. Cultural differences, the way you describe them, have always interested me. Now I'm thinking more and more of what could be possible in reality. If I actually believe that the culture we are living in is going down, what to do about that? Find another, growing new culture? What new culture? Etc etc.
Science, for better or for worse, is always finding limits. Any time a discovery is made about what is and what can be, there's a logical implication about what else is not and what cannot be. The sociological trends I've been looking at are not laws as one finds in physics, but many of the relationships are very strong, or even dramatic, and they definitely suggest limits on what is possible.
For instance, I mentioned secular societies, before; such societies are overwhelmingly superstitious. When Americans picture a secular society, they imagine a society full of Richard Dawkins. In actuality what seems to happen as religion retreats is that people become rather agnostic and unpolarized about religion; and then they become somewhat pluralistic and ad hoc about religion; and then they believe in hauntings, parapsychology, and good luck charms, and develop a severe case of tetraphobia: https://people.howstuffworks.com/number-4-unlucky.htm#pt1
Even if these trends are just trends, when I think about the numerous failures people have had in the past to enforce new cultural norms from scratch, it seems as though humans really are bumping up against genuine laws - if not laws of nature, then laws about their *own* nature in the here and now. In general, what is even possible for humans may have already been very well explored throughout history.
This is where my personal interest in matrilineal cultures comes from. Holding individualism at a more modest level seems more stable and "healthy," but when families and clans become more important, unfortunately human breeding patterns tend to drift into unpleasant realms. Weak matriclans of extended family units centered around sisters sounds pretty good; no strict prohibitions against divorce, women still maintain a decent status, and so on.
Unfortunately I have a sense that even this may be a dead end - I'm starting to suspect that matrilineal cultures can only thrive when males are useless as family providers, and any value they have is to the community at large rather than to their offspring. This circumstance was pretty common in the neolithic when technology was so limited that males' main role was to share the meat they brought home and protect the group militarily... but in a complex modern society the idea that fathers wouldn't be able to significantly impact their children's prospects is pretty hard to imagine.
I think what you are talking about is enormously important: every discussion on what kind of society is desirable needs to be closely followed by a discussion on which society is possible.
Anthropologically speaking I'm a bit skeptical of your theory of matrilines and patrilines. Not because you are outrightly wrong. I just see too many exceptions from the rule that matrilineal kinship systems make women's position stronger. For example, the Tiwi hunter-gatherers of Australia was matrilineal. There, older men monopolized all women in polygynous unions. Men bought a wife through helping a mother raise her daughter from the time that daughter was a baby (annoyingly enough, the anthropologists studying the Tiwi didn't focus at all on this interesting arrangement). That way, older men who could command resources amassed wives in polygynous unions. Those wives tended to be more attracted to men their own age, which caused considerable strife within the group.
When you say “matrilineal”, I suppose you mean a family based on the female side with comparatively low paternity certainty. That kind of arrangement definitely exists. I just suspect that it needs a narrower description than “matrilineal societies”. But I can't say that I know which one.
Words aside, I'm probably a bit more positive than you about matrilineal/matrilocal/whatever culture. Basically, I'm part of a matrilocal arrangement myself: My family has bought my mother's land, where she still resides. And that is great for me. Lately I have been thinking a lot about the problem of too few good fathers. Whatever reactionary feminists say, things weren't that perfect in the mid-20th century either. There is a reason why feminists wanted to do away with marriage: A rather big proportion of all marriages were actually not that pleasant. I suspect the reason could be too many cads and too few dads in the population as a whole. Or maybe that only a minority of people are actually good at being married.
In any case, there is no paradise of happy marriages to go back to.
Although there were more marriages fifty years ago, I don't know how many more happy marriages there were. For that reason I'm loosely thinking of alternative arrangements for raising children for those who can't get themselves into marriages. Maybe the kind of matrilineal societies you are talking about could serve as inspiration here.
> I just see too many exceptions from the rule that matrilineal kinship systems make women's position stronger.
Too many for what? Too many for A) the rule to matter for the purpose of social engineering, or, too many for B) the rule to be true?
If it's A, any society, matrilineal, patrilineal, or otherwise, that lies nestled within a cosmopolitan bilineal society like Sweden will necessarily have an elevated position for women, since women will know that they can always defect outside if things get too bad inside. The Amish are notoriously difficult to enter and leave, but around 15% still leave ( https://www.amishbaskets.com/blogs/blog/how-many-amish-people-leave-the-community ).
If it's B, I can only say that this takes the same form as Anders' comment that "In China, wealthy regions might be overwhelmingly Han, but poor regions are also overwhelmingly Han." This was true, but it also gave rise to a type II error.
> When you say “matrilineal”, I suppose you mean a family based on the female side with comparatively low paternity certainty.
Again, my sense is not that paternity uncertainty is crucial - that's only one way for matriliny to work. Even if fathers know for certain their wives' children are related to them, they still may be indifferent to that if they have no ability to affect their children's reproductive success. This is the case in communities where male labor is fully communal, as they work together to hunt, build houses, and fight.
> There is a reason why feminists wanted to do away with marriage: A rather big proportion of all marriages were actually not that pleasant. I suspect the reason could be too many cads and too few dads in the population as a whole.
Well... I get that adolescence lasts forever. But there are as many terrible, spirit-crushing wives out there as there are cads, Tove.
> I'm loosely thinking of alternative arrangements for raising children for those who can't get themselves into marriages. Maybe the kind of matrilineal societies you are talking about could serve as inspiration here.
Mm. Another idea: I met an Indian couple whose marriage was arranged; they seem to think it works very well.
So, here's my pushback... I think for option 1, the better description is something like capitalist, materialist, or maybe even productivity-seeking. The current "high-tech" aspect is just a means to an end, as the technology improves the productivity to improve the material standard of living, in the direction set by the markets.
And because the direction is set through the markets, it is fairly easy and natural for this style to have majority support. The businesses are making what the people want, after all, to get their money. As we said in the Cold War, "Capitalism delivers the GOODS" - people got the things they wanted and this did make them happy (though of course it did not remove ALL the ways people can be unhappy.)
But I confess, I say this as a true believer! I embrace a beige global capitalist future - Starbucks everywhere I go. The most vexing counter-example I wrestle with is China's turn under Xi. They were chugging along wonderfully experiencing great improvements, but somehow this nationalist spirit was able to take hold even though it threatens to undermine their gains. Unrelatable, to me.
>>The current "high-tech" aspect is just a means to an end, as the technology improves the productivity to improve the material standard of living, in the direction set by the markets.
Yes. And no. High-tech is the means to produce what people want. But also the means for our society to defend itself militarily against its enemies, whoever that turns out to be.
As you say, capitalism is a very strong system because it gives people things they desire. But there are things that it doesn't give people too. Meaning, for example. Somehow a few populations, the Amish for example, manage to give people something that can compete with things they desire. Since those people also manage to have children, their culture seems stronger in the current environment.
Moreover, capitalism gives people what they desire, but not necessarily what makes them happier. People desire mobile phones as their 24 hour companions, and our culture has no way of saying "what you desire is not good".
I like many aspects of Western capitalism too. Too bad if they get crowded out by more viable cultures.