Your Future (or Lack Thereof)

Posted on | December 27, 2014 | 60 Comments

“Male and female created he them” (Genesis 5:2) seems obvious enough. “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28) is not a difficult commandment to understand or obey. However, in the modern world, so many people actually think they’re smarter than God that they manage to persuade themselves that extinction is “progress”:

A survey by the Japan Family Planning Association reported that over a quarter of men aged 16–24 “were not interested in or despised sexual contact.” For women, it was 45 percent…
Forty-nine percent of women under 34 are not in any kind of romantic relationship, and nor are 61 percent of single men. A third of Japanese adults under 30 have never dated. Anyone. Ever. It’s not that they’ve stopped “having sex”… It’s bigger than that: It’s a flight from human intimacy. . . .
The Japan Times . . . quotes the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research as saying that the country’s population is expected to decline between 26% and 38% by 2060.

That information comes from Mark Steyn, whose ancestors were on a first-name basis with the author of the commandments previously cited, and here’s more of the same:

“See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil . . . I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”
— Deuteronomy 30:15, 19 (KJV)

It’s really simple, but some folks think they’re smarter than God.

Category: Abortion, Contraceptive Culture, Japan, Planned Parenthood, Religion

Comments

60 Responses to “Your Future (or Lack Thereof)”

Evi L. Bloggerlady
December 27th, 2014 @ 6:22 pm

So is Rule 5 God’s Work? Only if it results in actual babies!

http://ladybitsandbobs.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/4516064033_3ee641e6e0_z.jpg

Cats don’t count as babies (unless you are a cat).
RS
December 27th, 2014 @ 6:47 pm

While I understand the point of your post–certainly demographic decline is a threat to many nations and cultures–I would note that there are perhaps those who view the state of the world and society and fear for any immortal soul they may bring into being. There is no doubt that there are movements which desire to remove parents from the child-rearing equation. Countless examples exist, but one dovetails with your prior post: the movement to delegitmize any education of children other than that which sponsored and run by the state. Richard Dawkins and his ilk believe religious upbringing is “child abuse.” I could go on. It seems to me that devout Christians would be leery of bringing children into a world where they stood a strong likelihood be being sacrifices to Moloch.

I acknowledge the previous paragraph could be construed as evidencing a lack of faith in God’s provision, but absent significant rollbacks of the Progressive agenda, it’s only a matter of time until our children no longer are our own.
Joe Katzman
December 27th, 2014 @ 6:53 pm

There’s a thesis that says eligible women are actually interested in a smaller percentage of men – estimates vary from 10-40% – and will hold out for occasional sex with those men if the state and/or a career acts as their de facto husband.

Now add a culture that shames women for not sacrificing their prime attractiveness/ childnearing years to university or work. And just for good measure, systematically miseducates and penalizes men.

Throw in the premise that many people respond to incentives by changing behavior.

Seems like you’d get something like the Japan described here, albeit something less frozenly rigid in a more individualist western culture. Women are either holdouts, or past their prime when they start and carrying a lot of baggage. Men are conditioned to be unattractive, and scarred enough by early experience that they MGTOW or otherwise exit the relationship game once they start hitting their stride in their 30s.

RSM, you’ve been studying feminist works. Your thoughts?
Adobe_Walls
December 27th, 2014 @ 7:13 pm

And yet I’d wager that devout Christians are more fruitful.
Dana
December 27th, 2014 @ 7:25 pm

If a quarter of the men but 45% of the women are not interested in sex, it says something not very complimentary about the performance of Japanese men in bed.
kilo6
December 27th, 2014 @ 8:03 pm

AAw geez there goes dinner

How about next time we all agree to just post pictures of (what could easily be) her car

http://i.imgur.com/v2YGZ.jpg
kilo6
December 27th, 2014 @ 8:17 pm

Or her furniture (yes it’s a twist on a picture that you posted a few months ago)

http://i.imgur.com/ETGB1BB.jpg
IceBerg77
December 27th, 2014 @ 8:19 pm

What’s the cause? Can’t blame it all on porn, and video games. From what I’ve resd is that Japan’s stagnant economy, and upheaval in the labor market is the primary driver. Not much different here, or anywhere else as to why marriage, and birth rates are falling. japanese men feel it is their responsibility to be the sole bread winner and pay for a lavish wedding. A lack of jobs, and stable employment stops that along with starting a family.
Juliette Akinyi Ochieng
December 27th, 2014 @ 8:25 pm

Christians are told to fear nothing but God and a modern “sacrifice to Moloch” is abortion, so that fear would be nonsensical.
IceBerg77
December 27th, 2014 @ 8:26 pm

The feminist movement in Japan isn’t nearly as influential as it is in the West. Japan is still mainly dominated by a traditional value set which young men no longer feel they can live up to due to a stagnant economy and weak labor market. Unfortunately, and as it is here, men are shamed for not living up to the ideal even when the situation is completey out of their control and pushing from the top down.
RS
December 27th, 2014 @ 8:31 pm

I meant in the sense of having one’s teachings at home subverted by modern society at every turn, designed to destroy any semblance of faith in our Creator.

It was a metaphor. They’re used occasionally in writing.
RS
December 27th, 2014 @ 8:34 pm

And BTW, the ancient sacrifices to Moloch were of children who had been born alive, pre-Roe.v. Wade.
Fail Burton
December 27th, 2014 @ 9:03 pm

One has to wonder what might happen if 1,000 men and women in Japan volunteered to not use a computer or the internet at home for one year and not told why.

Everyone should read E.M. Forester’s “The Machine Stops” and take it for what it’s worth. The fact a single video game might sell 10 million units is disturbing when you throw internet, film and TV on top of that.
kilo6
December 27th, 2014 @ 9:17 pm

There’s also a trend in modern ~~public schooling~~ forced public indoctrination centers that encourages such thought (the followers of Malthus, his disciple Paul Ehrlich and other anti-humanistic Merchants of Despair). Moreover modern society encourages being philosophically rudderless. Personally, this idea was validated for me when I observed teachers who had hostility for Christianity but also disliked Stoicism and Objectivism (seemingly due to the sense of certainty and the confidence which they inspired). I’ll spare you my diatribe against modern public schooling.

Although I’m Christian I realize there are several atheist, agnostic or deist readers here at TOM so as a supplement, how about the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius on matters such as this…

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which, today, arm you against the present.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts, therefore guard accordingly; and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue, and reasonable nature.
RS
December 27th, 2014 @ 9:29 pm

I keep a copy of his Meditations which read occasionally. As I tell people, pagans can and did occasionally glimpse aspects of the Truth, even if they did not see the whole.
robertstacymccain
December 27th, 2014 @ 10:04 pm

“It seems to me that devout Christians would be leery of bringing children into a world …”

That kind of thinking is called cultural defeatism. It is caused by a loss of morale. In warfare, few resources are more necessary to victory than morale. What is causing the demoralization of Christians? The declining quality of leadership in the church. As our institutions of higher education have become not only pervasively secular, but indeed openly hostile to Christianity, the intellectual quality of clergy has declined. There was a time when the men who preached from the pulpits of Christian churches were among the most educated and most articulate members of their communities, respected by leaders of business, education and political affairs. The secularization of our society, however, has largely reversed this, so that clergy are now often intellectual mediocrities, and community leaders are frequently contemptuous of clergy.

How can this problem be solved? I do not know. Yet I know that individual Christians must not let themselves become demoralized, but must instead keep the faith and remain determined to fight for the gospel until the final day.
Jeanette Victoria
December 27th, 2014 @ 10:20 pm

LOL
robertstacymccain
December 27th, 2014 @ 10:34 pm

Read what I have written about the Contraceptive Culture, in particular “The Pill at 50: Unhappy Un-Birthday.” Fertility rates have gone down or up in different societies at different times, but never before in human history have we seen a trend like that in advanced industrial nations in the past half-century. Beginning in the 1960s, fertility rates in industrial nations declined rapidly to below-replacement levels and stayed there for decades. The slight increase in U.S. fertility rates since the 1990s were almost entirely a result of Hispanic immigration.

What has happened is that, over the course of two generations, we have normalized a set of ideas that may be best described as anti-natalism. Ben Wattenberg first called attention to this problem in The Birth Dearth, and others (mostly Christian conservatives) have also addressed it. The problem is that the most influential institutions of our culture (including higher education, the news media and the entertainment industry) are all controlled by people devoted to this anti-natal worldview, so that only those who consciously reject this philosophy (e.g., the Duggars) are in any way likely to escape its effects.
Juliette Akinyi Ochieng
December 27th, 2014 @ 10:44 pm

Metaphors? Used occasionally in writing? Really? Wow, thanks!!!

I’ll remember that when I’m reading one of the dozens of books on my Kindle waiting for attention, or while in my second decade of blogging or while I’m writing my second 300+ page novel.

Seriously, the metaphor was off. It’s okay. Peace and hair grease.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
December 27th, 2014 @ 10:46 pm

Who knew Duggarism is a thing!
Evi L. Bloggerlady
December 27th, 2014 @ 10:47 pm

Don’t underestimate porn and video games!
Juliette Akinyi Ochieng
December 27th, 2014 @ 11:03 pm

The Bible was written before A.D. 1973????!!!!!

Wow the things you learn on Stacy’s site!

🙂
kilo6
December 27th, 2014 @ 11:07 pm

Demographics is destiny
– or –
The future belongs to those who show up
Juliette Akinyi Ochieng
December 27th, 2014 @ 11:31 pm

Next you’re going to tell me that the Old Testament was originally written in ancient Hebrew–except for parts of Daniel, Ezra and Jeremiah, which were written in Aramaic…but I’ll never buy that one!
DeadMessenger
December 28th, 2014 @ 12:22 am

Why am I not surprised that Amanda’s familiar is all black?
RS
December 28th, 2014 @ 12:26 am

Maybe if you hadn’t attempted a snarky response initially, you might have had some respect. Calling an allusion/metaphor nonsensical in your drive-by insult determined what you got in return. Your flip”modern sacrifice to Moloch is abortion” remark, ignores that others seek to take our children from us and purge any Christian upbringing they might have.

I’ve reared three Christian children and sacrificed much for their spiritual welfare. I worry about my, as yet, unborn grandchildren. Don’t throw your snide emoticons and comments about “nonsensical” allusions my way. Perhaps had you had the spirit discerning enough to understand my original comment, you would understand.
Matt_SE
December 28th, 2014 @ 12:29 am

I believe this story came out almost a year ago, and I remember being intensely disturbed by it. What collection of forces could overcome the biological drive? It boggles the mind.
But you don’t have to be a genius to see what the end game will be.
DeadMessenger
December 28th, 2014 @ 12:33 am

“What is causing the demoralization of Christians?”

I think that one thing is that since the 19th century at least, teaching young people to put their faith in empiricism and rationalism has caused many (now) so-called Christians to reject that which is heavenly and miraculous. Christianity is beyond natural; it is supernatural. It needs that undergirding because we live on a spiritual battlefield. How can Christians bring light to an unbelieving temporal world, if we don’t believe in the spiritual world?

As for me, I’ve seen so many supernatural things, that I can’t NOT believe. Sadly, this knowledge is lacking for many, including a lot of pastors.
RS
December 28th, 2014 @ 12:41 am

I don’t disagree. It is always with individual Christians. I’ve striven my entire life to protect and nurture the souls of my children. It is the only thing that matters to me.

How does one do that? First and foremost, it comes from the knowledge of the Word. Know what God says and then, you are capable of judging what the world says.

I fear, however, that too may Christians have “outsourced” their children’s spiritual educations to Sunday school or whatnot. There is no spiritual leadership or example at home.

I think many of us will have much to answer for on the Last Day.
DeadMessenger
December 28th, 2014 @ 12:42 am

Certainly, little boys being systematically turned into girly-men, and little girls being turned into feminist dykes has had some effect on anti-natalism. Used to be, when gender roles were clearly defined, everybody knew where their place in society was, that being where God said it was. Now, just try to find a little girl willing to admit she longs for a husband and family. And try to find a little boy who knows for a certainty that his place is at the head of a household. Not so ubiquitous anymore, sad to say.
Juliette Akinyi Ochieng
December 28th, 2014 @ 1:00 am

I wasn’t being snarky. I said that it didn’t make sense. And I attempted to shrug it off.

I said you were wrong. You didn’t like it. All the subterfuge about your offspring is cover for the fact that you don’t like being countered.

And since you are unable to talk down my knowledge level, you talk down my spiritual discernment.

I get it.
Fail Burton
December 28th, 2014 @ 3:46 am

The built-in satire of gender feminism is that it can only exist in an extremely limited way even as it strives to reproduce its ideology on a societal level.

What that means in real world terms is the more successful it is the more it ensures the destruction of the Western human rights societies that tolerate them. Where are the innate successes of feminists in Egypt?

Taken on the level of what other nations could do as opposed to what they would like to do, the dearth of women’s studies in Asia and the Middle East would put prominent gender feminists to work on re-education farms if not slave pens. There was no feminism in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, but there were “comfort women.”

This is a culture that spits at the idea of patriotism and pretends the world would be peaceful without American imperialism without understanding it is American power and restraint that has paved the way for the longest period of peace in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. Idle hands are the Devil’s tools is not that far from peace leads to a dislocation from reality and even decadence. This is the true source of Simone de Beauvoir and Andrea Dworkin, the crumbs we have thrown them they arrogantly confuse with their own talents.

A cult too stupid to understand they never complain about diversity in Vet’s Hospitals or lead protests to occupy draft offices is too stupid to survive without my benevolent sufferance and amused tolerance. Cut a feminist off from the 911 number that leads to the police they whine about even while they survive only with that presence and what happens?
RKae
December 28th, 2014 @ 4:14 am

Keep in mind: “Be fruitful and multiply” was said to two people who were the only people on the planet.

By the time you get to the New Testament, things change. It’s all done. Christ is coming back. St. Paul tells us to be like he is: celibate. But if you can’t stand that, then get married. One woman per man, one man per woman.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
December 28th, 2014 @ 4:16 am

Amanda lives in Brooklyn and is way too cool to own a vehicle, let alone a GMC Envoy. But I do like the stickers.

One day she will die and the cats will feed off her body.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
December 28th, 2014 @ 4:27 am

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M-oWbhz2mo8/UWldvO4FlmI/AAAAAAAAXgU/jje1Y1EflAo/s1600/child_sacrifice.jpg
Fail Burton
December 28th, 2014 @ 5:59 am

The satire there is I just read a Tweet by an award-winning SF author living in the U.K. He maintains because he has an unknown number of black friends who don’t like “flying while black” on Delta airlines, that ‘Old-school southern racism is allegedly still a thing.”

You can’t make up stuff more arrogantly stupid than throwing down an entire region from an ocean away based on zero. The simple act of stepping outside would be a mind-blowing revelation to a guy like that.
Jim R
December 28th, 2014 @ 8:12 am

I wonder if this is related to the (apparent) phenomenon of people, especially kids, having all their relationships on Facebook, Twitter, etc?

As an introvert, I get how interacting with real people (especially when you can’t just turn them off) is a PITA, but this seems a little much. How do they function in the real world?
Daniel Freeman
December 28th, 2014 @ 8:19 am

As our institutions of higher education have become not only pervasively secular, but indeed openly hostile to Christianity, the intellectual quality of clergy has declined.

I’m sorry, but I think that the problem is even worse than that. There is a moral rot in the clergy, as they orient themselves to ape the most successful in terms of dollars, who are more likely to be brilliant confidence artists than great shepherds of souls.

I’m not a very good agnostic. I try, because there are some things that I need to work out, but it makes me angry to see the “prosperity gospel” preachers lead people astray for the own personal gain. The treasure that we seek is not of this world, and anyone who tells you that you can get richer by giving him money is either an investment manager, lying, or both.

Too many pastors are just one step removed from a Nigerian email scam artist. They’re also just one step removed from Simon the Magician, trying to use the name of Jesus to “make a contract with the universe” (i.e. cast a magic spell), and that infuriates me.

In another age, I might have been a monk or even a priest instead of a MGTOW. Now I’m just a philosopher, reduced to sharing my opinions on the internet, and hoping that I don’t type anything too offensive after drinking. Bah.
CrustyB
December 28th, 2014 @ 9:36 am

If Christ gave his “a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife” speech today he’d be arrested for hate speech.
Daniel Freeman
December 28th, 2014 @ 10:21 am

It’s actually a really complicated psycho-social equation, and I’m not Japanese so I can’t speak for them. But here, let me put it like this:

The more you want kids, the more you expect to love them, and to fear losing them. Mere physical danger is what we men are made for; but in a misandric culture that relentlessly poisons the minds of women against men, combined with a gynocentric society that is systematically biased to favor women in any contest, it’s just a matter of luck if a man actually gets to be with his kids to adulthood.

Kind of thinking out loud, as I reason this through, it has become clear to me that the key is that I must identify the personality markers of women that are resistant to the anti-father propaganda. Because I have always wanted to be a dad, but I will not accept the risk of becoming nothing more than a court-mediated ATM.
Trazymarch
December 28th, 2014 @ 10:32 am

I doubt the cause is purely economic one.
http://www.indexmundi.com/map/?v=25
What’s the easier environment to have kids? Places with lowest crude birth rates: Monaco/Hong Kong/Singapore/Germany/Japan or places with highest crude birth rates: Niger, Uganda, Mali, Zambia?
Trazymarch
December 28th, 2014 @ 10:39 am

” I must identify the personality markers of women that are resistant to the anti-father propaganda.”

Rather than “personality markers” there are
“religion/group markers”. Catholic woman and/or pro-life woman will be certainly way more pro-father that for example woman focused on self-realisation,career or just spewing bile on Man for being oppressor. Of course it might be not true if the Catholic woman in question describes herself as Progressive.
robertstacymccain
December 28th, 2014 @ 10:39 am

The interactions between social, economic and cultural influences are complicated, but the problem itself — once you identify it clearly — is really very simple. Unfortunately, the attitudes at the root of the problem are learned during the course of childhood and adolescence so that by the time people reach young adulthood, it is very difficult for them to un-learn those attitudes.

“Culture” is always ultimately about what we teach our children. Mature adults are not influenced by TV, movies, books, magazines, etc., the way young people are influenced. I’m sitting here surrounded by radical feminist books and there is zero chance that these books could turn me into a feminist. Presented to an impressionable 19-year-old student at a university, however, the potential to shape their worldview is much greater.
Daniel Freeman
December 28th, 2014 @ 11:07 am

I like it when there are simple answers to complicated questions. I’ve been Catholic before, and there are traditions (such as the Jesuits) that invite intellectual inquiry. I could just go back. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes. Thank you.
Dana
December 28th, 2014 @ 11:15 am

Everyone who has ever had cats know that they cannot be organized.
Trazymarch
December 28th, 2014 @ 12:07 pm

Of course it is a bit more complicated than that but you are welcome.
SDN
December 28th, 2014 @ 12:14 pm

I suspect that feminism has had more impact on Japan than Stacy is willing to acknowledge.
K-Bob
December 28th, 2014 @ 12:21 pm

I suspect prostitution doesn’t count as “sex” in Japan.
Trazymarch
December 28th, 2014 @ 1:49 pm

“”Culture” is always ultimately about what we teach our children. Mature
adults are not influenced by TV, movies, books, magazines, etc., the way
young people are influenced. I’m sitting here surrounded by radical
feminist books and there is zero chance that these books could turn me
into a feminist. ”

Of course. Because you went “deeper”. But what would happen if you knew feminism only from TV? Whether you would start watching TV when you were 10 years old or 30 years old.
Quartermaster
December 28th, 2014 @ 3:49 pm

The Bible is already hate literature, so the chances the ultimate author would be arrested is pretty high.