Sunday, April 29, 2012

“Japan is evolving into a type of society whose contours and workings have only been contemplated in science fiction.”

There is a population bomb. It is the implosion of population in many parts of the world. It is going to change societies profoundly and irrevocably, and many cultures will cease to exist.

Ross Douthat has a remarkable essay in ground zero of demographic collapse-- Japan.

Excerpt:

Japan is facing such swift demographic collapse, Eberstadt’s essay suggests, because its culture combines liberalism and traditionalism in particularly disastrous ways. On the one hand, the old sexual culture, oriented around arranged marriage and family obligation, has largely collapsed. Japan is one of the world’s least religious nations, the marriage rate has plunged and the divorce rate is higher than in Northern Europe.... 
Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world, and there were rashes of Internet-enabled group suicides in the last decade. Rental “relatives” are available for sparsely attended wedding parties; so-called “babyloids” — furry dolls that mimic infant sounds — are being developed for lonely seniors; and Japanese researchers are at the forefront of efforts to build robots that resemble human babies. The younger generation includes millions of so-called “parasite singles” who still live with (and off) their parents, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of the “hikikomori” — “young adults,” Eberstadt writes, “who shut themselves off almost entirely by retreating into a friendless life of video games, the Internet and manga (comics) in their parents’ home.” 

The tragic irony is that the overpopulation nuts are ignoring the actual crisis facing civilization. Population  decline is the real danger, and this catastrophe is happening, particularly in Europe and Japan. It may not be reversible, and it is almost certain to cause the extinction of entire civilizations over generations. Population implosion reaches a point in which it is an anti-Malthusian feedback mechanism-- you end up with too few young people to reverse the loss of young people.

Douthat notes that in the U.S. population implosion is mitigated by two factors-- brisk immigration and out-of-wedlock births. Indeed these are checks on implosion, but they will cause-- are causing-- demographic and cultural changes that we are only beginning to understand.

Julian Simon, nemesis of overpopulation nut Paul "the battle to feed humanity is over" Ehrlich, got it right: human beings are the most important resource.

We need to protect and nourish and grow our most important resources, which are people. 

18 comments:

  1. The divorce rate is higher than in Northern Europe?!!!

    I was a public school teacher in Japan from 2009 until 2009. It was refreshing to see that nearly every child came from an intact nuclear family. It made all the difference in the world.

    Strong families benefit kids which benefits society as a whole. Liberals pretend not to see any connection because then they might have to admit that some family arrangements are better than others, which they absolutely will not do. So they argue that any type of family is just fine, so long as love is present.

    I do not, however, have any figure for the divorce rate in Japan. I just assumed it was relatively low, considering the fact that I rarely ever encountered it among the parents of my students. Perhaps the kids were more likely to come from intact families because the phenomenon of "baby mamas" and "baby daddies" has yet to reach Japan?

    I do recall reading certain liberal commentators bemoaning the fact that divorce still carries with it too much stigma in Japanese society. That's secret code for, "We sure have a lot of work to do in destroying this society and its institutions."

    Ben

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    1. Divorce rates (per year, per 1000 people) can be found on Wikipedia. If the numbers are right then the divorce rate in Japan (2.11) is a tad lower than in most of Northern Europe (Denmark, 2.92; Finland, 2.53; Norway, 2.41; Sweden, 2.24). Iceland (1.81) would be the only exception.

      Just to compare, the divorce rate in the US is 3.4. Must be all those godless liberals. :)

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    2. Wouldn't divorce rates be better measured in terms of couples who got divorced, rather than per 1000 people?

      Ben

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    3. I concur with Trish. There's a major difference between Northern Europeans and Japanese. The difference is that the parents of Japanese kids are married, and occasionally get divorced, while the parents of Northern European kids are likely never to have been married in the first place and probably changing partners with high frequency, much like the "baby mama" culture I see here in my neck of the woods.

      The Japanese family is much healthier than the American one. I can say that from my experience there. I'm less familiar with places like Sweden and Denmark.

      Ben

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    4. I should have said 2008 until 2009.

      Ben

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  2. "Just to compare, the divorce rate in the US is 3.4. Must be all those godless liberals. :)"

    Oh, Oleg. You're so cute.

    Actually there are plenty of godless liberals in this country. I'm SURROUNDED by them. I live in Massachusetts.

    Perhaps the divorce rate in Scandinavia is low for the same reason that the divorce rate in my deep blue state is so low--because marriage has become such a spurned institution that people just don't do it. Fewer people marrying means fewer people divorcing. And then the liberals get up on their high horses and preach to people in other parts of the country that we liberal Bay Staters are the ones who REALLY respect marriage.

    Swedish children born out of wedlock amounted to 52% in 1995.

    Here's a great table you can refer to: http://demoblography.blogspot.com/2007/06/percentage-of-out-of-wedlock-births-in.html

    Illegitimacy rates have exploded in Europe, despite the legalization of abortion. The only reason I mention this is because liberals like to argue that we pro-lifers should celebrate single moms. While I believe that out of wedlock births are ALWAYS preferable to abortion, we don't have to choose one or the other. We can have neither, but ironically we've gotten both.

    TRISH

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    1. That's interesting, TRISH. Did you know that the divorce rate in liberal Massachusetts is substantially lower than it is in conservative southern states like Alabama or Texas? Oh, you didn't? Well, now you do.

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    2. Yes, Oleg. That's what I said, isn't it?

      "Perhaps the divorce rate in Scandinavia is low for the same reason that the divorce rate in my deep blue state is so low--because marriage has become such a spurned institution that people just don't do it. Fewer people marrying means fewer people divorcing. And then the liberals get up on their high horses and preach to people in other parts of the country that we liberal Bay Staters are the ones who REALLY respect marriage."

      I literally said that in the last comment.

      My point is that there's reasons for this statistic. Our "respect" for marriage isn't one of them.

      TRISH

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    3. No, it's not just "fewer people marrying = fewer people divorcing." Look up CDC tables and you will see that marriages are generally more stable in the Northeast than they are in the South: the probability of a divorce per marriage is lower.

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    4. You're just the king of straw man arguments, aren't you?

      I understand that marriages in richer areas are probably more stable than in poorer areas. The poor people here in Massachusetts simply don't get married. That leaves marriage to middle class and above.

      But if you remember correctly, I was talking about Scandanivia.

      Now, why don't you show me some of those CDC stats? Perhaps they're less misleading than the last stats you provided, which measure divorces per one thousand people, whether they're married or not.

      TRISH

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  3. Trish,

    I think Oleg has some kind of problem processing things that he reads. I don't think he does well with linear thinking either.

    Even his statistic about divorce rates is misleading. Why should we care what the divorce rate is per 1000 people? Why not per 1000 married people? Wouldn't that make more sense? People who aren't getting married aren't getting divorced either.

    In a society like Scandinavia, in which people are less likely to marry, counting the divorce rate that way might result in a more favorable picture, but it's still an essentially useless stat.

    Ben

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  4. Ben, He's a grad student at a research university. What do you expect?

    TRISH

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    1. I'd love to know which university.

      Ben

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    2. Oleg:

      Did you have the benefit of having a rich family or of affirmative action? Just wondering.

      The Torch

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    3. My farther and mother were engineers. The family wasn't rich as you might guess from the fact that we lived in the Soviet Union. I got to where I am now on my own, without any connections.

      Any other questions, The Torch?

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  5. Oleg reminds me that there are lies, damned lies and statistics.

    He acts if he's simply hitting you with the cold, hard facts and that his allegiance to such facts is dispassionate.

    But his use of facts reveals a dileberate bias. He's trying to deceive.

    The number of divorces per 1000 people is an absolutely meaningless measure! The divorce rate in my high school was zero because none of the students were married. The divorce rate in a society in which marriage has become passe will be lower than in a society in which people still tie the knot. Does he not realize this? I think he does.

    The Torch

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    1. I am aware of that, The Torch. Go ahead an look at CDC tables if you are interested in seeing what fraction of marriages in different parts of the US ends in a divorce. That takes care of the disparities in the marriage rates.

      Conclusion? Marriages may be fewer in the Northeast, but they tend to last more than do marriages in the South. Make of it what you will.

      My own take on it is that people in the South marry early, when they have no idea what they are doing. People in the Northeast marry late, and by that time they have already found a mate with whom they can live much of their lives. People view marriage seriously anywhere in the US. Perhaps, too seriously: that's why they take so long to tie the knot.

      My own experience? I married young. Still married to the same woman. How about you, guys?

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