Comment by skciva | Hacker News Reader

Comment by skciva | Hacker News Reader

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> It often feels like we as a society have sort of entered into a weird territory with a lot of these liberal changes.

I feel like you could write this sentence at almost any point in modern history.

> The societal structures that have worked in the past, while you may not like them, did work.

Worked for whom exactly? Almost laughable how people from different backgrounds would have a VERY different opinion on this. Basically any minority, whether that be gender, racial, or religious among other oppressed groups.

> Fertility wins in the end,

Wins in what way? The continued existence of the human race? I think we're seeing a slow down in birth rates for a number of reasons, but heres a few big ones amongst my circles:

- anxiety/fear of the present, leaving no time to consider having offspring - anxiety/fear of the future being enjoyable and/or inhabitable for offspring - a focus on enjoying the present as opposed to striving for a better tomorrow for offspring

If political philosophies care at all about fertility they better start looking at it holistically and not purely from a breeding standpoint, because otherwise people will wise up to being treated like birth & labor livestock.

> I feel like you could write this sentence at almost any point in modern history.

I think so. And I think that most cultural innovations fail the fertility test. This isn't a new phenomenon.

> Worked for whom exactly? Almost laughable how people from different backgrounds would have a VERY different opinion on this. Basically any minority, whether that be gender, racial, or religious among other oppressed groups.

I am merely making the argument that conservative approaches to societal structures, regardless of the specific values, tend to more tried and true as they have been around a long time. Basically if a societal structure is old, it has likely passed the fertility test.

New structures of society I think often do not pass the fertility test and thus can be more temporary and slowly die off and are replaced by more conservative structures which do.

> If political philosophies care at all about fertility they better start looking at it holistically and not purely from a breeding standpoint, because otherwise people will wise up to being treated like birth & labor livestock.

Yes, this is a good point. I think that modern day liberalism is sort of facing a reckoning here with fertility. And I fear it may not pass the test. And we will see Western liberalism start to decay as more conservative branches of society start to out number it and proclaim that this brand of liberalism philosophy has failed - you can see this in a lot of conservative messaging. I mention this because it is something I can see happening, not because I want it to happen.

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