> I speculate that a different thing is happening in Europe. Every time I hear European takes on issues, it feels like Europe is post-religion, post-values, post-meaning. Everything is relative; pleasure is the only personal goal, and not harming others is the only external goal. Why even have kids? Why get married? It's a lot of work,
Yes, to all this.
> plus there's a widely-held belief that Europeans/Westerners in general bear generational guilt because of what colonizers did in the 1500s anyway, so it feels virtuous to voluntarily decline as a civilization, freeing up more oil and resources for the developing world.
Uh? I've never heard about it in the media. The only thing vaguely similar would be the focus on minimizing our resource consumption so that our kids doesn't suffer "too much" about the man-made climate change, but usually the focus is about buying less thing, using renewable energy, not making fewer children.