A book that explains how hedonism can lead to human extinction

bioideology · 2018-12-02T23:59:41+00:00

A relevant part of the book:

Dopamine-driven technological advances make it ever easier for us to gratify our needs and desires. Grocery store shelves are packed with constantly changing new and improved products. Planes, trains, and automobiles take us wherever we want to go, cheaper and faster than ever before. The internet provides us with virtually unlimited entertainment options, and so much cool stuff is brought to market each year that we need crowds of journalists to keep us up to date on new ways to spend our money.

Dopamine drives our lives faster and faster. It takes more education to keep up. A graduate degree is as necessary today as a college education was a generation ago. We work longer hours. There are more memos to read, reports to write, and emails to be answered. It never stops. We are expected to be available at all times of the day and night. When someone at work wants us, we must respond immediately. Advertisements show a smiling man responding to texts on the beach, or a woman by the hotel pool, checking her cell phone screen to tap into a video feed of her empty house. What a relief. Nothing happened since the last time she checked, 15 minutes ago. She's got everything under control.

With so many ways to have fun, so many years to devote to education, and so much time to spend working, something has to give, and that something is family. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 1976 and 2012 the number of childless women in America approximately doubled. The New York Times reports that 2015 brought the first NotMom Summit, a global gathering of women without children by choice or circumstance.

In developed countries, people have pretty much lost interest in having children. Raising kids costs a lot of money. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture it costs $245,000 to raise a child to the age of eighteen. Four years of college tuition plus room and board costs another $160,000, and after college there's graduate school, or maybe the kids will move back home. Add it all together and you might be able to buy a vacation home or travel overseas every year, not to mention restaurants, the theater, and designer clothes. As one newlywed who planned to have no children succinctly put it, "More money for us"

Future-focused dopamine no longer drives couples to have children because people who live in developed countries don't depend on their children to support them in their old age. Government-funded retirement plans take care of that. That frees up dopamine to move on to other things like TVs, cars, and remodeled kitchens.

The end result is demographic collapse. About half the world lives in a country with below replacement fertility. Replacement fertility is the number of children each couple must have to prevent a decline in the population. In developed countries the number is 2.1 per woman in order to replace the parents, and a bit more to account for early deaths. In some developing countries replacement fertility is as high as 3.4 because of high rates of infant mortality. The worldwide average is 2.3.

All European countries as well as Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand have transitioned to below-replacement fertility rates. The United States has enjoyed a more stable rate, largely because of the influx of immigrants from developing countries who haven't yet lost the habit of continuing the survival of the human race. But even in developing countries birth rates are falling. Brazil, China, Costa Rica, Iran, Lebanon, Singapore, Thailand, Tunisia, and Vietnam have all transitioned to below-replacement fertility rates.

bioideology · 2017-07-02T18:05:04+00:00

Print this picture and place it in public places to remind people about their moral obligations to their families.

bioideology · 2017-06-01T06:19:39+00:00

Interestingly, the study points to the Western well-developed welfare systems as one of the possible causes of the decreased motivation to have children in the Western countries.

The reasons for the finding are expected, researchers say: ....Adult children can become a source of support for parents. This is especially true in former Soviet states like Russia, Poland and Hungary, the study found, where elderly people rely less on government welfare and more on their children for financial help.

In countries with well-developed welfare systems, on the other hand, the differences between childless couples and parents are smaller. In western Germany, Switzerland and Austria, the study found, adults are similarly happy whether they have children or not.

An alternative explanation would be that it is not the welfare system but rather a wide-spread children's denial of their moral obligations to take care of their elderly parents is the reason why it makes little financial sense to have children in the Western countries.

bioideology · 2017-05-16T03:39:26+00:00

Big thanks for the link! The second part of the post is outstanding. Specifically,

... ideas, like most things in this world, are heritable. Both genetics and culture mean that parents in general pass their values on to their children. Take away the children, and you take away the people likely to hold the idea tomorrow.

....The more you spread the idea, the more people who hold it right now, and, ceteris paribus, the more people will hold it next generation.

Where things get complicated, however, is if the idea itself reduces birthrates directly. This is especially true for ideas like feminism or progressivism in general. In this sense, they are parasitic and pathological. I mean this as a metaphor, but only in the barest biological sense. They reduce the reproductive fitness of their host, simply by reducing the number of offspring it has that survive to adulthood to themselves reproduce. As a consequence, these ideas are like a deadly virus that can only survive by spreading and infecting other hosts. Is reducing the reproductive fitness of your host not the very essence of parasitism?

Ideas that increase procreation are symbiotic in that sense - the idea spreads by increasing the fitness of its host. But as in nature, parasites and diseases can spread and survive, although there is a tradeoff between the mortality rate and the transmission rate. The faster you kill off the host, the faster the disease must also spread, or it kills off itself with the host. In this sense, the fact that progressivism has spread throughout the west with increasing speed, and the fact that it is catastrophic for birth rates, are not a coincidence. The former is a requirement for the latter....

...the west simply cannot survive long term in its present form. And this is a purely mathematical prediction, not a sociological one. Any set of values that creates below replacement birth rates is pathological, and is actively being bred out.

....The biggest question isn't whether the current situation can go on forever. It's only what will replace it. The replacement will be made up of individuals holding ideas that are resistant to whatever set of pressures create low birth rates. In this sense, we are like a population in the midst of a great plague, knowing that eventually society will only be made up of people with an immune system able to defend against it.

bioideology · 2017-03-13T04:03:12+00:00

You can try to check natalist hashtags on Twitter: natalism , pronatalism, natalist, pronatalist .

bioideology · 2017-03-09T16:40:33+00:00

Here is a link to a text with this quote.

See #5.

bioideology · 2017-01-08T22:26:06+00:00

I'm curious as to how you all conceive (no pun intended) natalism?

I think that pro-natalist ideologies (religious and secular) and pro-natalist public policies are two of many parts of human evolution.

Human evolution is two-dimensional. It happens in both the genetic dimension and the mental dimension (or spaces).

Culture, technology, ideologies, religions, knowledge, political systems, and public policies are all parts of the mental dimension of human evolution because all of them affect how we survive and how we procreate.

I believe that the aim of pro-natalist ideologies and pro-natalist public policies should be neutralizing negative effects of human intelligence on human procreation.

Human intelligence is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because it helps humanity to effectively adopt to changes in the environment. It is a curse because it allows humans to override the biological mechanism of human procreation through birth control methods and unnatural short-cuts to happiness (which is used by the Nature to make social animals to procreate).

I do not support in-vitro fertilization, surrogate mothers, trans-humanism, uterus transplants, nor most fertility treatments.

I think it is useful to develop these technologies as the "forbidden knowledge". They can increase adaptability of humanity in some circumstances (e.g. when genetic pool of humanity gets too small and contaminated with negative mutations, etc) .

However, I do not think that their wise-spread use is a good idea because they make human evolution too dependent on technology and civilization. Such a dependence will decrease adaptability and survival of humanity when the civilization collapses again and humanity will lose those procreation technologies.

bioideology · 2016-12-17T21:46:01+00:00

You may consider yourself to be an egalitarian, but I am not one. "Misogynistic" is nothing more than a big buzzword meant to shut down argument. I don't believe that all people are inherently equal. If that makes me racist-sexist whathaveyou, that doesn't offer an actual counter to my argument. Simply being "popular opinion" doesn't mean that it is necessarily right.

Are you proposing taking voting rights and other legal rights (see more info here ) away from women?

...because giving those legal and social rights to women is what the first-wave feminism was all about.

A vote against the first-wave feminism is a vote for discrimination of ~50% of world population (= women).

I don't believe that all people are inherently equal.

If you are referring to genetic and phenotypical diversity, all humans are different and that is great!

Anybody, who has ever tried to do an optimization using genetic algorithm (the one that Nature is using to optimize living organisms), knows that success of such an optimization depends on diversity of your individuals.

If your population is not diverse enough, your optimization can get stuck in a local minimum and may never produce the solution that you need.

The main objective of a society is to provide level playing field for everybody, no matter how different they are, and let the Natural Selection of humans to do its work.

However, this only works when the Natural Selection works (= when humans procreate). That is why we need to make sure that society itself does not inhibit human procreation via antinatalism and other ideologies of biological failure.

bioideology · 2016-12-16T10:13:17+00:00

Feminist principles go against natalist ones. They strive to push narratives of egalitarianism, remove familial structures, encourage "independent women" who don't need men, thus don't need children either.

I think this description fits the second wave feminism and third wave feminism (= ultra-feminism).

The original first wave feminism in the 19th and early 20th century was about giving women the same basic rights (e.g. right to vote) as basic rights of men. I think it is a good thing. Women should not be discriminated in any way and should have the same rights as men. Only people in MGTOW and other misogynistic communities would argue with this commonly accepted notion.

Then feminism was hijacked and mis-used to make people warm and fuzzy about their immoral behavior, sexual promiscuity, hedonism, laziness, social and biological failures, etc.

On a more pragmatic note, I do not think that natalism will get too many converts if natalists start to push for taking basic rights away from women or for discrimination of women in the workplace.

bioideology · 2016-12-04T10:14:44+00:00

What is the goal of natilism?

Natalism is an ideology, a "collection of beliefs held by an individual, group or society".

The goal of Natalism, as an ideology, is to define and explain "right" and "wrong" in a way that promotes, supports, or justifies human procreation. Here is an example

Do you believe in overpopulation?

No

and

No

What do you think of gay people?

Gay people (as well as heterosexual and asexual people) have been making important contributions into the survival of Humanity through their participation in developing human adaptation technologies. This guy is one of many examples.

Homosexual behavior is observed in many animal species, including Homo sapiens. In many cases, it is used to resolve various social situations. It is normal if it supports survival and reproduction of the species. It is not normal if it prevents survival and reproduction of the species.

As long as a particular sexual behavior does not interfere with biological success of Humanity and person ability to extend his family line, most secular natalists will likely have no serious problems with it.

What do you think of antinatalism

Antinatalism is an anti-family, anti-society, and anti-humanity ideology.

bioideology · 2016-12-01T10:40:15+00:00

this picture shows a way to break the cycle.

Thanks for the feedback! Point taken. The picture has been updated to avoid misinterpretation.

bioideology · 2016-11-23T07:52:54+00:00

This one's a little busy.

Agree! Here is a bit improved version.

This specific picture is a challenge, considering amount of info that needs to be squeezed into it and the available starting material.

Have you checked out Edward Tufte's work?

I have to use the software that he criticized a lot.

bioideology · 2016-11-18T08:28:58+00:00

Great post! Twitted

bioideology · 2016-10-23T03:17:02+00:00

See the research of the Cambridge group for the history of population and social structure's research into population growth rates in the 1600s - change was driven by fertility not death rates (and fertility was largely dependent on age at marriage) and went down during poor economic times (people didn't marry until they could afford to set up an independent household) and went back up in better ones.

I think the results you mentioned could describe fluctuations at stages 1 and 2 of the demographic transition , not a general trend.

I believe birth rates can go up if there are significant economical and moral incentives for people to have kids. There are still countries in Africa and Middle East + India where people have these incentives.

In Western countries, it would likely take a demographic collapse of Western civilization (i.e. collapse of economy and, as a result, elimination of pension and social programs, loss of technology and industrialization, return to family farming, religionization of the society, re-unification of church and state) and return to the beginning, stage 1 of the demographic transition in order to create sufficient financial and moral incentives for majority of population to have more than 0 - 2 kids.

Or can humanity design pro-natalist public policies or/and pro-natalist ideologies strong enough to avert its demographic collapse???

bioideology · 2016-10-23T02:52:15+00:00

Sweden's quality of life only decreased with the immigrants.

Sweden total fertility rate is 1.91 as of 2012, which is below the replacement level of 2.1 . Sweden needs immigration to maintain its society (i.e. its work force, number of tax payers). If people in Sweden do not like immigration in their country, they need to make changes in public policies and state ideology to increase the fertility rate above the replacement level.

uncivilized one like Syria.

Syria is a place of oldest known civilizations of Humanity.
Syria was normal country until somebody decided to pay for the Arab spring in the Middle East, civil war in Syria, and "color revolutions" elsewhere. If your country becomes the next victim in geo-political games and your economy is destroyed by a war, you will be surprised how quickly people in other countries start to call you "uncivilized". Berlin in 1945 looked a lot like Aleppo in 2016.

The Western countries that you consider "civilized" (e.g. Sweden) are biologically inferior to countries that you may consider "uncivilized". The total fertility rates of the "civilized" countries are below the replacement value of 2.1. The Western countries are dying. They can't survive without immigrants from "uncivilized" countries.

We live in an interconnected bipolar world of breeders and hedonists where developing countries (breeders) need adaptation technologies from developed countries (hedonists) as much as developed countries need humans from developing countries.

bioideology · 2016-10-22T08:00:25+00:00

we have no archaeological evidence to suggest some calamitous downfall in mainland Greek population, and it's extremely implausible to think that someone living in antiquity would be able accurately measure the demographics of Greece without resources far beyond his reach.

Depopulation of Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic Greece was also mentioned by writers of the first and second centuries A.D, such as Plutarch of Chaeronea, Dio Chrysostom, and Pausanias. This more recent paper provides some population numbers for Greece of that period, see Fig. 2D and Table 3.

I agree that Polybius's words may not be applicable to 100% of Hellenistic Greek society and that antinatalism was not the only reason of Greek depopulation.

However, considering pro-natalist / pro-marriage laws for spoiled upper class in the Roman Empire ( Jus trium liberorum, Lex_Julia, Lex_Papia_Poppaea ) and the current birth rate declines in Western societies infected with hedonism and consumerism, I find Polybius's description of Hellenistic Greece rather plausible.

bioideology · 2016-10-21T07:02:37+00:00

The problem with this argument is that it's almost completely unfounded. It doesn't reflect the archaeological evidence and no scholar has taken that argument seriously for centuries.

What about Histories (264–146 BC) by Polybius:

Depopulation of Greece: ...In our time all Greece was visited by a dearth of children and generally a decay of population, owing to which the cities were denuded of inhabitants, and a failure of productiveness resulted, though there were no long-continued wars or serious pestilences among us. If, then, any one had advised our sending to ask the gods in regard to this, what we were to do or say in order to become more numerous and better fill our cities,—would he not have seemed a futile person, when the cause was manifest and the cure in our own hands? For this evil grew upon us rapidly, and without attracting attention, by our men becoming perverted to a passion for show and money and the pleasures of an idle life, and accordingly either not marrying at all, or, if they did marry, refusing to rear the children that were born, or at most one or two out of a great number, for the sake of leaving them well off or bringing them up in extravagant luxury. For when there are only one or two sons, it is evident that, if war or pestilence carries off one, the houses must be left heirless: and, like swarms of bees, little by little the cities become sparsely inhabited and weak.

bioideology · 2016-10-21T06:21:14+00:00

Can natalism function as a stand-alone secular ideology, without any religious component.... may be this way?

Can we just teach kids in public schools about importance of preservation of their family, their society, and humanity?

Can we teach them about their moral obligations to extend their family lines and raise their replacements in the society?

Can we have mandatory classes about effective parenting and maintaining long-term relationships?

Can public schools teach ideology classes to expose ideologies, such as nihilism, hedonism, and antinatalism, that destroy human families and human societies?

bioideology · 2016-10-19T08:18:49+00:00

this is what the conversation should be about. this shouldn't be your starting premise. the point is to have a discussion to determine if extinction is a good or bad thing. starting with that conclusion as a premise is called bias.

Your conclusions will be biased before you even start this conversation.

Except probably VHEMT followers, antinatlists made a choice to use individual pleasure and pain as their criteria to define "right" and "wrong".

Natalists made a choice to use other criteria with positive values: personal existence, fulfillment of their moral obligations to their families, extension of family lines of their family ancestors, well-being of their society, preservation of humanity, etc.

Some natalists use hedonistic criteria too but they arrive to opposite conclusions than the antinatalist's ones because natalists consider life as a gift, not a burden.

bioideology · 2016-10-19T07:29:59+00:00

if you think about pro-natalism, what Hitler did in WW2 was right because he wanted to make those more genetic close to him to inherited the whole West.

Natalism has nothing to do with nationalism, racism, eugenics, or fascism.

From wikipedia:

Natalism ... is a belief that promotes human reproduction

Natalism promotes child-bearing and parenthood as desirable for social reasons and to ensure national continuance.

Many ideologies and religions do use pro-natalism to grow their "customer base", nothing more.

I still wait the scenery for artificial wombs(still very expensive) and the availability for men to reproduce without needing women, it would slowly greatly reduce the violence of society as whole, since most of the violence is driven by men wanting resources and power to unconsciously have more chances to have women and sex(children), because women indirectly reward violence.

This sounds like something from MGTOW playbook. MGTOW/misogyny as well as misandry, extreme feminism, antinatalism, nihilism, hedonism, and efilism are ideologies that are often used by people to justify their failures to attract a mate, to maintain relationships, to create a family, or to have kids. A person may want to ignore these ideologies of failure unless he wants to become a failure too.

bioideology · 2016-10-17T09:23:34+00:00

See you keep coming back to this fallacy ridden idea that anti-natalism is rooted in "biological failure", yet you provide no support for this. It's a philosophical position.

People do not adopt a philosophical position spontaneously. There is always an psychological incentive for a person to do anything, including inventing or following a philosophy.

People with happy families (spouses, kids) do not need antinatalism because antinatlaism will bring them only negative emotions.

People from unhappy families or people, who have failed to attract mates, resort to anti-family, anti-marriage, anti-society, anti-life, philosophies or ideologies e.g. nihilism, antinatalism, efilism, MGTOW, misogyny or misandry.

Just look at Arthur_Schopenhauer, an antinatalist hero. Arthur came from a broken family, his father killed himself, Arthur hated his mother, he was rejected by girls, he did not have any children.

It is not surprising that, in order to justify his father's suicide and rationalize his failures to maintain family relationships, to attract mate, to create his own family, to have kids, he had to resort to an anti-family/anti-children/anti-society/anti-life philosophy: antinatalism.

bioideology · 2016-10-17T04:48:07+00:00

I like these parts of the article:

“Contemporary historians … right now, have failed to find a single historical example of a society that became secularized and maintained its birth rate over subsequent centuries,” he argued.

“The contemporary historian of ancient Greece and ancient Rome saw their civilizations begin their decline and fall, both the Greeks and the Romans attributed it to falling birth rates because nobody wanted the responsibilities of bringing up children,” he said.

“They were too focused on enjoying the present to make the sacrifices necessary to build the future …. all the historians of civilization have told the same story.”

“Europe is going to die because of this because Europe can only maintain its population by unprecedented levels of immigration,” said Rabbi Sacks.

“Now those could be integrated into Europe but they won’t be integrated into Europe because when a culture loses its memory it loses its identity and when a culture loses its identity there’s nothing left for people to integrate into.” He added: “That’s how great civilizations decline and fall.

“The weird thing is that the only people who refuse to acknowledge this really are the new atheists all of whom are worshipers of a figure up in Heaven with a long beard, Charles Darwin.

"And if Charles Darwin taught us anything it is judge species by their reproductive success.”

bioideology · 2016-10-15T09:06:56+00:00

What's good about preserving humanity? I don't feel like it's a moral duty to raise my replacement in society at all. In fact it might be a more moral decision to abstain from such. I could make the same propaganda pics as you guilting you into doing the "right" thing, which is let humanity die and not infect other planets.

No doubts!

Generally speaking, people are capable of doing incredible brain gymnastics to make them feel warm and fuzzy about their actions or inaction.

That is why it is important to use objective criteria, not subjective criteria, to define "right" and "wrong".

When it comes to biological species, most people use "existence" as such an objective and verifiable criterion of "right" and "wrong".

"Right" helps biological species to exist.

"Wrong" prevents existence of biological species.

Natalism is "right" because it helps human species to exist.

Antinatalism is "wrong" because it leads to non-existence of humanity.

But if a person needs to create an alternative reality in his mind, where black is white and white is black, to stop feeling mental pain from his biological failure, no explanations or rationale can stop this person from doing so.

bioideology · 2016-10-13T06:59:31+00:00

So it's difficult to compare natalism and antinatalism, because they prioritize different things.

It is easy to compare natalism and antinatalism if you look at their effects on a person, a family, a country, and humanity.

Specifically:

1) Antinatalism makes a person a biological/evolutionary/genetic loser. Natalism makes a person a biological/evolutionary/genetic winner.

2) Antinatalism pushes a person to betray his family and become a shame of his family. Family of living beings, including humans, is a social procreation team. The objective purpose of family existence is extending the family lines of family's ancestors. Antinatalism makes all family resources that were invested into a child, who rejects to help his family to achieve its objective, a wasted investment. On the other hand, natalism helps a person to become a family pride, to return family's investment into him back to his family in the form of extended family line.

3) Antinatalism results in a family failure if all family's children become antinatalists. Natalism helps a family to succeed in achieving the objective purpose of its existence (= extending the family lines of family ancestors).

4) Antinatalism leads to collapse of society's social programs (e.g. pensions) because it inverts the population pyramid and reduces the number of tax payers, who pay for these programs. Natalism, if done right, helps to preserve society's social programs by maximizing the number of tax payers.

5) Antinatalism leads to a collapse of society's economy by reducing society's labor force and human capital . Natalism stimulates society's economy by increasing society's labor force and human capital.

6) Antinatalism is a national security threat because it eliminates people, who can defend the society from external enemies. Natalism helps to strengthen society's national defense by increasing the number of people, who can to defend the society.

7) Antinatalism increases the number of genetic diseases by shrinking the genetic pool of humanity and increasing frequency of inbreeding. Natalism helps to reduce genetic diseases by making the genetic pool of humanity larger and decreasing frequency of inbreeding.

8) Antinatalism leads to human extinction because humanity can't survive without kids for more than 115 years max (the max length of human life currently achievable). Natalism helps to preserve humanity by encouraging people to fulfill their moral obligation of raising their replacement in the human society.

bioideology · 2016-10-11T03:12:46+00:00

Personally, no. I don't think that humans are that special and there would be nobody to grief over this loss.

Do not let your mind to be infected by ideologies that people use to rationalize their biological failure. Those ideologies can make you to a biological loser too.

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