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There’s no equivalence. It’s one thing when men and women compromise on an individual basis in the context of marriage despite differences in points of view. It’s entirely different to have social conditions of increasing atomization and an overall decline of social engagement where young men and women are, relatively speaking, getting politically radicalized in opposite directions, which appears to be a phenomenon without historical precedent.
And? Lots of things are without historical precedent. It doesn't mean they are actually problems. It's a self correcting issue. Either through assortative mating, or in people who won't reach out across the aisle simply not having relationships while others will find their desires for companionship overcome their political biases, or they don't and simply don't pass on their genetics. There is nothing that needs to be done, a new balance will be found.
By definition, society is only able to adapt to, and withstand the effects of, events with precedent, as it obviously lacks experience in dealing with events without. It’s the same thing as armies preparing to fight the last war, which is understandably the butt of jokes, but unfortunately nobody can prepare for the next war, as nobody has seen it yet. Every event without precedent has the potential to result in an enormous crisis.
Also, the social radicalization in question is mostly happening in one direction only, which is not something that is discussed to a larger extent here, as far as I can see. In the past decade or so, it’s leftists, and leftist single women in this particular case, that are mainly radicalizing in Western societies, not rightists. This is mostly resulting from intentional, systematic and choreographed propaganda campaigns directed at them. Thus I find it rather rich on your part to declare that “there is nothing that needs to be done, a new balance will be found”. I’m sure you’re aware that any social concern of the liberal Left can simply be dismissed out of hand according to the same line of reasoning, aren’t you?
Anyway, frankly I find your attitude regarding this rather conceited, so I don’t have anything else to add.
If society could only deal with things with precedent it could never have developed in the first place as early societies would constantly be encountering things for the first time. So i think your first point is demonstrably in error.
I think you're also getting mixed up between the meta and object levels. If you think society is going to be better with lots of kids then you can and arguably should campaign for and have lots of kids yourself. No issues there! But my point is that regardless of what you do, or what we do individually societies are exceptionally resilient and adaptive. Societies survive civil wars, coups, nuclear bombs, plagues, ice ages, famines. Civilizational collapse and more.
My point is not that you shouldn't try to change something. Its that at a societal scale adaptions will happen regardless as situations change. Because pressures will emerge whether anyone is planning them or not.
Even the leftist stuff you decry is an example, the pressures that created that movement exist outside of the movement itself.
You need to think at a much more macro level when looking at societies. Big changes are the result of cascades. Leftism could not have got to this point without the relevant circumstances having been created by prior societal choices and outcomes which created a favorable environment for those leftist ideas to be successful. And in turn the outcomes of this wave, will create the conditions for the next, which might be a more conservative swing, or something else we won't predict.
People are just the vector at this scale. Individual choices are socially mediated as a gestalt that no-one has control of.
If you want to shape a wave thats fine. Everybody does, just be aware the ocean will exist whether your wave breaks or not. That is my point.
Well, yes, societies have the potential to undergo development/refinement in such conditions, that much is certainly true. But they can also degenerate and collapse, which is what a demographic implosion is likely to result in, or at least contribute to.
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