Terrific series. I especially liked the recap at the start of this post.
Isn't the ethic of 'individualism' a tool domesticating 'the clan' in favour of 'society'?
To me, the current low fertility is a result of the status given to hedonism ie self pleasure.
Raising one's kids is not hedonic. The pleasure is indirect, coming from seeing them establish themselves as effective agents among other kids and, ultimately, among other adults.
This has come about because now, with effective birth control, reproduction does not (automatically) follow from having sex. In a few generations, say 5 or 6 equating to about 150 years after the widespread adoption of birth control. Perhaps by the year 2124, I expect high-tech society will have selected for people much more sensitive to the pleasures to be got from child rearing. If we last that long, of course!
> Some people describe the 1950s as an ideal and say that we need to go back to how families were then in order to regain the ability to procreate. I disagree. The 1950s wasn't a golden age for the family. It was just the family's last show of independent life before it was finally defeated.
In regard to how things are *perceived* in the United States, it's interesting to note that, as you say, the 1950s are seen as the heyday of the family. (Likely because it was the most prosperous time when that sort of family was dominant.) But the US 1950s family was largely (and was idealized as) the "nuclear family", basically a married couple and their children, largely economically autonomous. (It would be interesting to know whether the pattern of perceptions and realities was similar in Europe.)
The sociologists note that the nuclear family is unnatural, and occasionally I've run into books that make that clear. IIRC, "Love in the Machine Age" (1930) laments "the breaking up of families", which is when the adult children move out to form their own households. Which means that its author remembers times when that was not the norm. (The same phrase was used in the 1960s to describe the effect of divorce in nuclear families.)
But of course even the "extended family" with grandparents, adult siblings, cousin children, etc. resident isn't the traditional clan system, which extends out to second and third cousins, at least.
Well the answer on the surface is obvious: artificial wombs and genetic engineering. Technology is already here, political and cultural will is lagging.
Not so obvious answer is that evolution of human civilization is obsolete and doesn't matter anymore. AI is here and from now on the only thing which matters is evolution of AI.
re: "Whenever they grow too powerful, they start furthering their own interests at the expense of society as a whole" -- you frame this in terms of feuds, wars and conflicts, and indeed this has been a problem. But the worse problem, in my estimation is waste and the obligations you have to the other members of your family. I was talking to a Nigerian man who had moved to Cape Town and started a successful small grocery store combined with a small scale import/export business there. Why, I wondered, could he not do such a thing in Nigeria? Were the business laws so bad there? Oh, he said," The business laws are pretty bad in Nigeria, that is true. But the real problem was that his family lived there. " This would mean that all of his relatives would think they were entitled to free goods from his store -- because they were 'family'. And he would never be allowed to grow his business the way he was here. As soon as he got enough money together, he said, the relatives would come by and demand he pay for things, and beat him if he would not, or burn down the business. " It's like living with a 90% marginal tax rate. This means that people mostly aren't industrious, because they cannot profit from their own effort." So he moved to South Africa. He sends money back to relatives, but he, not they get to decide how much to send. And he can send money to a cousin in the local Christian church, which does a pretty good job of seeing that the money is spent well, rather than to his grandmother's sister who is a despot and just rewards her favourites in the family.
Surprised to not see any reference to the Amish here.
Terrific series. I especially liked the recap at the start of this post.
Isn't the ethic of 'individualism' a tool domesticating 'the clan' in favour of 'society'?
To me, the current low fertility is a result of the status given to hedonism ie self pleasure.
Raising one's kids is not hedonic. The pleasure is indirect, coming from seeing them establish themselves as effective agents among other kids and, ultimately, among other adults.
This has come about because now, with effective birth control, reproduction does not (automatically) follow from having sex. In a few generations, say 5 or 6 equating to about 150 years after the widespread adoption of birth control. Perhaps by the year 2124, I expect high-tech society will have selected for people much more sensitive to the pleasures to be got from child rearing. If we last that long, of course!
Does "society" in this case mean the state?
> Some people describe the 1950s as an ideal and say that we need to go back to how families were then in order to regain the ability to procreate. I disagree. The 1950s wasn't a golden age for the family. It was just the family's last show of independent life before it was finally defeated.
In regard to how things are *perceived* in the United States, it's interesting to note that, as you say, the 1950s are seen as the heyday of the family. (Likely because it was the most prosperous time when that sort of family was dominant.) But the US 1950s family was largely (and was idealized as) the "nuclear family", basically a married couple and their children, largely economically autonomous. (It would be interesting to know whether the pattern of perceptions and realities was similar in Europe.)
The sociologists note that the nuclear family is unnatural, and occasionally I've run into books that make that clear. IIRC, "Love in the Machine Age" (1930) laments "the breaking up of families", which is when the adult children move out to form their own households. Which means that its author remembers times when that was not the norm. (The same phrase was used in the 1960s to describe the effect of divorce in nuclear families.)
But of course even the "extended family" with grandparents, adult siblings, cousin children, etc. resident isn't the traditional clan system, which extends out to second and third cousins, at least.
Well the answer on the surface is obvious: artificial wombs and genetic engineering. Technology is already here, political and cultural will is lagging.
Not so obvious answer is that evolution of human civilization is obsolete and doesn't matter anymore. AI is here and from now on the only thing which matters is evolution of AI.
re: "Whenever they grow too powerful, they start furthering their own interests at the expense of society as a whole" -- you frame this in terms of feuds, wars and conflicts, and indeed this has been a problem. But the worse problem, in my estimation is waste and the obligations you have to the other members of your family. I was talking to a Nigerian man who had moved to Cape Town and started a successful small grocery store combined with a small scale import/export business there. Why, I wondered, could he not do such a thing in Nigeria? Were the business laws so bad there? Oh, he said," The business laws are pretty bad in Nigeria, that is true. But the real problem was that his family lived there. " This would mean that all of his relatives would think they were entitled to free goods from his store -- because they were 'family'. And he would never be allowed to grow his business the way he was here. As soon as he got enough money together, he said, the relatives would come by and demand he pay for things, and beat him if he would not, or burn down the business. " It's like living with a 90% marginal tax rate. This means that people mostly aren't industrious, because they cannot profit from their own effort." So he moved to South Africa. He sends money back to relatives, but he, not they get to decide how much to send. And he can send money to a cousin in the local Christian church, which does a pretty good job of seeing that the money is spent well, rather than to his grandmother's sister who is a despot and just rewards her favourites in the family.