Public speakers that can strongly engage at public speaking in both intellectual rigor and spiritual depth is sorely missing in the pro-natalist scene. I've seen many well skilled in either, but not enough in both.

The deeper epistemological problem with fertility rates is that many factors that heavily matter are among the hardest to measure, so they tend not to properly show up in the policy research that governments, wealthy pro-natalist individuals commission. What gets measured can get managed. Housing costs are measurable. The slow erosion of a cultural substrate that made family feel like a natural and desirable end that's not something you can easily put in a regression.

Suddenly a bunch of larping Japanese accounts are appearing in my feed. The modus operandi are all the same. They write the first post in English not translated but replies are always in Japanese. Wonder if @bunburyoudoujp has noticed those.

Japan's TFR in 2025 (and 2024) 2025 National Average: 1.14 (Lowest ever) Highest: Okinawa, 1.52 Lowest: Tokyo, 0.96

できた！

In East Asia, high fertility rates were usually linked to utilitarianism, nation building, legacy. Once utilitarianism started eroding, nation already built and the state-culture-traditions eroded, meaning, reasons for big families declined. They didn’t have those religions anchors like in the west as confucianism, shintoism weren’t exactly standalone religions. They were deeply entrenched state ideology, social hierarchy, family norms and governance. With the western influence and modernization, all those things started crumbling down.

On January 10, 1963, U.S. Representative Albert S. Herlong Jr (D-FL) submitted into congressional record a list of current 45 communist goals. The list itself was taken directly from W. Cleon Skousen’s anti-communism book The Naked Communist. Here are the 45 goals: 1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war. 2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war. 3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength. 4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war. 5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites. 6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination. 7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N. 8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N. 9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress. 10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N. 11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.) 12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party. 13. Do away with all loyalty oaths. 14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office. 15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States. 16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights. 17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks. 18. Gain control of all student newspapers. 19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack. 20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions. 21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures. 22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms." 23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art." 24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press. 25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV. 26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy." 27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch." 28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state." 29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis. 30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man." 31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over. 32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture—education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc. 33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus. 34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities. 35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI. 36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions. 37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business. 38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat]. 39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals. 40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce. 41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents. 42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ["]united force["] to solve economic, political or social problems. 43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government. 44. Internationalize the Panama Canal. 45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.

It feels like these podcasters overestimate their audience size. I want to see how much of their audience is from North Africa and South and West Asia

Governments are terrible at creating meaning, they are built to manage system, not the soul. They are built for control and standardization. That is why they are so good at destroying the meaning substrate.

It is time for a new meaning substrate that is pro long term humanity. The current one for modernity is extremely toxic for long term humanity.

That smartphone graph rilled a lot of people and now some people are trying to pivot blame into abortion and contraceptions as the root. These people aren’t quite aware of what Ceaușescu did in Romania by exactly banning those along with massive punishments for being childless.

Would people be interested in a spaces discussing fertility topics, impact of immigration and other things?

Robert Putnam said in 2007: In more ethnically diverse communities, people “hunker down” like turtles in their shells. - Trust collapses (even within your own group) - Fewer friends, less volunteering, less cooperation - More isolation, less community He hoped the long run would solve it by creating shared identities, but has this really occurred?

The original liberal order assumed voters would roughly share similar values and priorities, but now it's all been eroded into gender, race, religion, culture sectarian groups that override the former.

Utterly deplorable. That has to be one of the scummiest suggestions ever. Pay people to be pieces of shit. Getting paid to abandon children to the state. This will create a lot of dysfunctional people. No loving parents, abandoned.

Having a large housing is excellent for raising families and I am all in for making them more affordable and available, but it is the cultural substrate that will decide whether that extra room becomes a hobby room or a baby crib room.