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As I mentioned in the post, I don't really put that much stock in self-reported happiness rates either. But they are routinely used to demonstrate the failure of feminism/liberalism/whatever, so it's worth checking whether they support that argument, even at face value. With regards to the possibility that the European suicide rate is distorted by Europeans being worse at killing themselves and advancing medical technology saving overdoses but not gunshot suicide victims, it seems to add an extra wrinkle. "Americans report being unhappier + they kill themselves more often" and "Europeans report being happier + they kill themselves increasingly less" is suggestive.
What 'do' you put your stock in then? You ask me how I rate my life satisfaction in the country I live and I give you an answer, you're telling me I'm an unreliable source on my own happiness?
I wouldn't use 'happiness' alone as the appropriate barometer for gauging the health and well-being of society at large, but that's a bit of a different question. Whether or not feminism/liberalism brings happiness to a large number of women is ultimately irrelevant if it comes at the expense of some other part of society. Declining demographics, lack of family formation, dysfunctional men being raised by single mothers, sending women off to war, bending other important norms to reduce everything to a woman's private advantage, etc.; none of these are worth the cost that has to be paid, for women's fickle and relative sense of short-term happiness. It leaves 'everybody' worse off.
Everything's a success by sufficiently low standards, and a failure by sufficiently high standards. If running through and enumerating the long list of problems doesn't suffice in convincing you there's something rotten about the way we practice and act out the lifestyles that bring us happiness, then the only thing left at that point is to dispute the standards you bring to bear. But my reflexive reaction is to evoke Jiddu Krishnamurti's axiom on this:
"It isn't a measure of health how well-adjusted someone can be to a profoundly sick society."
"More women than men have surviving descendants" is not necessarily the same thing as "more men than women reproduced." This doesn't really matter though, what matters is there's no good evidence in the modern, post-sexual revolution west for a minority of men monopolizing a majority of the women.
What's the evidence for it? As extensively discussed in the link I provided, it's not backed up by partner counts, it's not backed up by virginity rates, it's not backed up by STD rates.
For five years in a handful of big cities, sure.
Iran has a TFR of 1.7, is regularly roiled by massive anti-regime protests, and religious affiliation is sharply declining among the nation's youth. Not much of a start.
Even if you take this statistics at face value, the conclusion isn't borne out, which is the point.
Will be rendered a non-issue by the end of the century at the absolute latest, almost certainly sooner.
What is the argument for this being a bad thing that doesn't begin with the premise, "family formation is good."
Is there good evidence for the causal impact of single motherhood on male dysfunction?
This is a non-issue. Why should I or anyone else care?
I don't know what you have in mind here, so I can't answer.
So much conservative critique of modernity boils down to waving one's hands and shouting, "look how horrible everything is!" with the listener left to draw the conclusion that things would be less horrible if we were more conservative. When I try to quantify things I usually find that the horrible things are A) much less bad than they're painted to be B) have no causal relation to conservativeness or C) are only horrible if you assume the conclusion that conservatism is good.
Eh, I'm not sure you read that correctly.
Per the link I provided, historically it's been backed up by reproductive rates. Seems to me to be quite clear.
A documented case is a documented case. It's one of the things you're asking for, right? There you go... seems like you're trying to now move the goalpost.
Okay. And? That's unrelated to what you originally asked for. I don't know what this response is supposed to make me think in light of what I quoted.
And your ultimate conclusion is what? We have 'zero' data that's worth absolutely 'anything'? A hard sell if you ask me.
It's most certainly not a non-issue to those women who value their freedom and emancipation getting sent off to die for a narrow set of political interests. It's also quite hilarious that feminism's best argument for 'not' sending women off to war in bulk is the anti-feminist argument.
And so what should they be concerned 'with' in your view? The entire project of politics is about competing visions of society and the group trying to impose their way of life on the community. I think you're being quite disingenuous here, if you're actually suggesting that conservatives writ large should be able to look out the window and say to themselves "there's nothing else left that's worth improving, onto the next unspecified problem that has no tangible impact on the world in which we live." Because that's my takeaway from what you're saying right here:
Says you and only you. And tell me. Just how 'bad' does it have to get before you start paying attention to it? Because this kind of attitude only has you constantly putting out fires all over the place and never actually addressing the issue 'before it becomes' a problem. Society requires maintenance and upkeep, just like everything else. Civilization isn't spontaneously kicked up by mother nature every few hundred years.
I have no idea what this even means, or why "conservatives" should care.
And likewise, my previous riposte is applicable:
"It isn't a measure of health how well-adjusted someone can be to a profoundly sick society."
If, of the human population 8000 years ago, only 1 man has surviving descendants today for every 17 women, that doesn’t actually mean that 8000 years ago, only one man had children for every 17 women.
Sexual libertinism did not cause the collapse of the USSR. Nor did it cause the famines, the mass executions, or any of the other bad things that happened in Soviet Russia.
It means Iran’s reactionary dictatorship has completely failed to arrest the demographic decline or general secularization of the country.
The conclusion is that the data doesn’t support the thesis that the sexual Revolution was a bad thing.
We don’t have conscription in the west so anyone, male or female, who doesn’t want to die for a narrow set of political interests can just stay home.
Conservatives are entirely justified on rejecting the sexual Revolution based on their own conservative premises, but they have no real argument to convince anyone who doesn’t buy into those premises.
To simplify, the things conservatives hate about modern societ are either good or aren’t the fault of modernity/the sexual Revolution/liberalism/whatever.
I'm honestly scratching my head here and am wondering how you strangely seem to admit the point I'm making with simultaneously denying it's significance. I think there's some profound illogic going on here.
No single factor explanation was ever the cause for anything out there. What you do in any responsible analysis is to examine what it's contribution to the problem was. I'm granting that you're arguing in good faith here, but if it's a body of historical research that you're looking for, the work has been done. And sexual libertinism continues to haunt Russian demographics today. It wasn't responsible for the casualty rate of the Eastern Front. What it 'is' responsible for on January 5th, 2023, is privileging an independent and selfish lifestyle over the continued survival of the community you live in.
And so you'll suggest in one breath SR played no role in weakening the USSR, but (conservative) Islamic theocracy is singularly to blame because they haven't reversed their demographic trend? Seems to not be the case in Afghanistan, which certainly isn't a bastion of liberalism in the Middle East. Wasn't the case with General Franco in Spain, certainly not the bastion of liberalism in Europe. I don't get what this is supposed to prove in your view.
The only way I see that someone can conclude that is that they haven't read the data or are indifferent to it. I think this is a good place to leave this conversation.
That wasn't the point I was making.
This is exactly the attitude many conservatives have taken. It's also the same reason why religious factions like Conservative and Reform Judaism will be looked at as a historical footnote in upcoming generations. Precisely because it's the ultra-conservative ones that are reproducing themselves. It definitely isn't the alternative. Even the most cynical conservatives I've known here have told me it's a mistake to insist that their liberal/progressive political opponents be concerned with their own reproductive fall off. They'd prefer they all die off in a generation or two. I'm not saying 'every' conservative solution to the problem will be guaranteed to work. I'm saying that 'only' a conservative solution in nature will be guaranteed to work.
If you require no further examination of data, I can see why you would support this conclusion. I see little value in continuing it. Be well.
There are 100 men and 100 women. A a thousand years later, 50 of those women have living descendants, while only 10 of the men do. This does not mean only 10 of those men ever reproduced, it means only 10 of those men established lineages that persisted for 1000 years and were not wiped out at some point over the centuries. It does not mean that, of those 100 original men, 95 died childless.
Having never read the book, what kind of historical data does Unwin work with to establish the sexual continence or lack thereof of pre-modern civilizations?
I have no point except that theocracy in Iran manifestly does not keep fertility above replacement, and I only brought it up because you suggested Iranian adultery laws as a model.
I spent my whole OP discussing data.
What point was it?
If life was going to continue pretty much as it is today for the next century, then the “Haredim and Amish will inherit the earth” people might be right, but it almost certainly isn’t.
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This response is supposed to make you grasp that the most thorough effort in current times to force tradition and religion at gun point failed as thoroughly as it could fail.
Where did ayatollahs go wrong? Were they too soft, were they too concerned about human rights, should they imprison, torture and kill more?
This isn't true. In western society that remark is hyperbole and we all know it, because nobody here is forcing tradition and religion down people's throats at gunpoint. Do you know what kind of societies 'are' doing that? Afghanistan. Somalia. Not even Russia or China are doing what you're suggesting, and it's the latter that are facing these problems most intensely.
He asked what a more traditional solution sounded like. Well, I gave him one. Current trends and demographics seem to be making the case that the latter is the more attractive long-term option. The only problem with my solution isn't the content of the policy, it's that it's too piecemeal and unfortunately lacks the strength and extremism that seems necessary to reverse current trends.
This is why I've repeatedly said in this community, when nation's get caught in a death spiral like this, there's 'zero' historical evidence to suggest that they reform their way out of it. The more severe the problem becomes, the more extreme the solutions become. The more extreme the solutions become, the more unacceptable they become to the population, etc., and you end up stuck in this self-reinforcing negative feedback loop. What history suggests happens is that these nation's die off or get conquered.
This subthread is not about Western society, it is about Iran.
Iran - society with all drawbacks of modernity and none of its benefits - is not attractive at all.
If your solution is Iranian one, it is unsatisfactory.
Is Iran forcing women to have sex at gunpoint? They've done that no more than Japan, Russia, China or the west has.
And all to its own activities in the world, I'm sure. Not the fact that there's an economic war being waged against the country. Which absent wealth, what else does modernity have to give?
Iran may be down in the 4th quarter, but they know they're on the field and can at least find the ball. Other nations are living on borrowed time and unless they get their head on straight, they'll be in an even more precarious position than Iran is.
Iran is enforcing all the online trad wish list - no porn, no homosexuality, no fornication, no adultery, no no-fault divorce (on woman side), no indecent clothing, no women's (or men's) rights in general. We were told it would result in happy wonderland full of big happy families. Somehow, it happened otherwise.
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