Industrial Civilization Needs a Biological Future

The core “WEIRD” populations of industrial society are getting consumed by it. They need to biologically assert themselves for technological civilization to survive.

Annie Spratt/Child outdoors

Across the developed world, total replacement fertility (TFR) has fallen below the minimum level required for societies to reproduce themselves. Even the welfare policies of Nordic countries like Denmark (1.67 TFR) have had little effect on this downward trend. Adam van Buskirk has published a new article at Palladium on what this trend means for the biological future of industrial civilization.

According to van Buskirk, the reality is that the social and material conditions of our time discourage people from reproducing:

Outside of ideal settings, the decision to have children faces both subtle and explicit forms of social opposition. A woman who marries young and has five children instead of going to college has “missed out.” A couple that raises a large family in an apartment or small home, using bunk beds and shared rooms, has a “bad quality of life.” Not many older parents are excited at the thought of “early” grandchildren if the parents aren’t financially independent.

This ambient cultural attitude is ingrained within Western societies, and as developing societies adopt Western forms of life, they too will experience fertility collapse. The solution is not immigration or degrowth—it is the promotion of a pro-natalist cultural outlook that is compatible with modernity.

It is the WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) class that is most impacted by these pressures. As their numbers grow throughout the world through assimilation into technological society, they stop endogenously reproducing. Modernity consumes the very population that created and sustains it. That vicious cycle puts the future of industrial civilization in doubt. Only self-conscious disengagement from the dysfunctional status-hierarchies of WEIRD society can guarantee its continuation as a group. The core populations of industrial society must biologically assert themselves to ensure not only their own existence, but that of their civilization.

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Here’s what’s been on the front page lately:

Industrial Civilization Needs a Biological Future by Adam Van Buskirk. The core “WEIRD” populations of industrial society are getting consumed by it. They need to biologically assert themselves for technological civilization to survive.

ESG Is the Opium of the Investors by Nicolas Villarreal. ESG has created a luxury good out of symbolic pro-social investing. In practice, it mainly replicates consensus ideology. Those who want to go beyond it must act directly on the world.

Britain Is Dead by Samuel McIlhagga. Despite its early industrial dominance, Britain’s elites never managed to adapt to the new landscape of power. After more than a century of structural breakdown, its very future as a unified state is in doubt.

Entrepreneurial Statecraft Gets the Goods by Wolf Tivy. You don’t reshape society by starting a cultural movement. Instead, you need to implement direct action materialism.

Who Is the Art World For? By David Gelland. Art today often aims to shock rather than inspire. How did that change happen?

That’s all for now.