From the Wisdom of Crowds: The new Democratic strategy is to refer to Trump’s GOP as “weird.” Because pro-natalism is becoming an increasingly hot topic, one that’s usually associated with the political right, people are now asking: is pro-natalism weird?
It’s weird but good. Ross Douthat explains: “it’s just hard for people to get their minds around the idea that reproduction, something that seems so basic to human nature, something that we’ve spent decades talking about in terms of ‘control’ and careful management, lest human impulses run to Malthusian or environmentally ravaging extremes, is actually just not happening on a scale that could make economies collapse and cultures disappear.”
It’s weird and fake. According to David Karpf, professor of internet politics: “It takes a particular brand of self-aggrandizing self-deception to build an entire world-saving plan on the belief that your children, your grandchildren, and your great-grandchildren will all abide by your dictate that they must all have lots of kids. The independent, rebellious drive ends now! For the next century or two, all of our progeny will gleefully follow in our footsteps.”
Some pro-natalists are weirdos. Writes Jonathan V. Last: “Here is an uncomfortable fact: Do you know who … is really into natalism? Racists and weirdos.” Last was a long-time pro-natalist, having published, in 2013, a book titled: What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster.
It’s absolutely not weird. So argues the X account More Births: “Worrying about [the drop in births] means you have a grasp of basic arithmetic and understand what numbers mean. The ones who are dismissive show their ignorance of the data and their general unseriousness about the future of the world. The data … points to long run economic and social decline, due to birth rates that are extremely low and headed lower still. The parts of the world that are below replacement fertility account for above 90% of global GDP, and more than 95% of patents and scientific publishing.”
Weird or not, pro-natalism is not going away, because demographic decline is real.
More here.
