Ross Douthat in the NYT: From now on the great political battles will be fought between nationalists and internationalists, nativists and globalists. .. Well, maybe. But describing the division this way .. gives the elite side of the debate .. too much credit for being truly cosmopolitan.
I experienced genuine multiculturalism in Toronto in the 1990s, and though it had its problems it was a pretty decent arrangement overall. In the decades since I've watched Toronto's multiculturalism steadily get ploughed under by the "multiculturalism" of the globalists.
The latter is really just bog-standard American WASP ethnocentrism--the belief that "inside every Vietnamese there's an American trying to shoot his way out". Calling that stance multiculturalism is basically an exercise in "rebranding", albeit one that is quite breathtaking in its audacity. So WASPs who let outsider customs influence their behaviour get accused of "cultural appropriation" instead of "not acting white", works originating in other cultures get denounced as "stereotyping" instead of being denounced as "foreign", etc. "Destroy the villiage in order to save it", IOW, played out in the cultural sphere.
I would say that while some of the differences between modern and ancestral cultures are due to morally neutral changes in circumstances or cultural drift, the ones that I care about more tend to be associated with increases in societal wealth and knowledge. These have been increasing steadily for at least the last few centuries, and seem to correspond quite well with the 'moral progress' made in that time. If something like the Age of EM happens to seriously reduce per capita wealth it's certainly plausible that trend towards moral progress could go in the opposite direction, but it seems reasonable enough for people's default assumption to be that the trends that have been ongoing since the at least industrial revolution will continue for a while longer.
That's not true. During Europe's colonial expansion European cultures loved themselves. After they stopped being proud of themselves in the 20th century they lost their overseas empires. They're now being replaced by other cultures (Islam most prominent among them) in their own homelands.
In short, Western cultures expanded when they loved themselves and shrank after they started hating themselves.
The surviving religions tend to emphasise fecundity, but there is evidence of defunct ones that emphasised chastity, such as the shakers. By si!okay reasoning, it would not be impossible to have a quiverfull version of atheism.
We need the mythos about the superiority of our culture to motivate people to absorb it, although it s ultimately a lie. So we also need to throw away the ladder once we have climbed it.
"The inability of atheists to achieve replacement-rate birth rates is just one sign of that failure."
Nice framing. You make it sound like atheists agreed that this is what we should achieve, and then failed to realize their goal. Of course, there is no such agreement. Atheism is nothing but a subset of realism, given the evidence against divine entities. Nothing more, nothing less.
I have no problem being outbred by theists, or unfriendly AI, or trillions of miserable em slaves. I'll bequeath them my high-entropy garbage on the way out.
And getting back on topic, I think that cultural chauvinism works the same way. The cultures that don't love themselves die.
The cultures that have loved themselves the least - western culture - has thrived and expanded, while the world of the self-loving clans is imploding and exploding.
I don't know, but TFR of atheists is about 1/2 that of the religious in western cultures. We could come up with many reasons why, but that doesn't change the finding.
See A Wider View
I experienced genuine multiculturalism in Toronto in the 1990s, and though it had its problems it was a pretty decent arrangement overall. In the decades since I've watched Toronto's multiculturalism steadily get ploughed under by the "multiculturalism" of the globalists.
The latter is really just bog-standard American WASP ethnocentrism--the belief that "inside every Vietnamese there's an American trying to shoot his way out". Calling that stance multiculturalism is basically an exercise in "rebranding", albeit one that is quite breathtaking in its audacity. So WASPs who let outsider customs influence their behaviour get accused of "cultural appropriation" instead of "not acting white", works originating in other cultures get denounced as "stereotyping" instead of being denounced as "foreign", etc. "Destroy the villiage in order to save it", IOW, played out in the cultural sphere.
I would say that while some of the differences between modern and ancestral cultures are due to morally neutral changes in circumstances or cultural drift, the ones that I care about more tend to be associated with increases in societal wealth and knowledge. These have been increasing steadily for at least the last few centuries, and seem to correspond quite well with the 'moral progress' made in that time. If something like the Age of EM happens to seriously reduce per capita wealth it's certainly plausible that trend towards moral progress could go in the opposite direction, but it seems reasonable enough for people's default assumption to be that the trends that have been ongoing since the at least industrial revolution will continue for a while longer.
>You have maintain that the low reproduction rates of atheists will result in the world becoming religious again.
"The world" hasn't stopped being religious yet and there are excellent demographic reasons that it will never do so.
>Islamic fundamentalist reaction is a Skinnerian extinction burst for religion.
That sounds like a wish-fulfillment statement of belief there.
I highly doubt that Islamic fundamentalism is the future of anything. Fortunately there are other options.
No, you have confounded them! You have maintain that the low reproduction rates of atheists will result in the world becoming religious again.
Islamic fundamentalist reaction is a Skinnerian extinction burst for religion.
They didn't love themselves as much as the clannish cultures they opposed. Outbreeding produces universalism.
That's not true. During Europe's colonial expansion European cultures loved themselves. After they stopped being proud of themselves in the 20th century they lost their overseas empires. They're now being replaced by other cultures (Islam most prominent among them) in their own homelands.
In short, Western cultures expanded when they loved themselves and shrank after they started hating themselves.
You're failing to understand the difference between memetic and genetic success.
The surviving religions tend to emphasise fecundity, but there is evidence of defunct ones that emphasised chastity, such as the shakers. By si!okay reasoning, it would not be impossible to have a quiverfull version of atheism.
We need the mythos about the superiority of our culture to motivate people to absorb it, although it s ultimately a lie. So we also need to throw away the ladder once we have climbed it.
The richer half would be better, since the poorer half would just breed until malthusian misery is restored.
"The inability of atheists to achieve replacement-rate birth rates is just one sign of that failure."
Nice framing. You make it sound like atheists agreed that this is what we should achieve, and then failed to realize their goal. Of course, there is no such agreement. Atheism is nothing but a subset of realism, given the evidence against divine entities. Nothing more, nothing less.
I have no problem being outbred by theists, or unfriendly AI, or trillions of miserable em slaves. I'll bequeath them my high-entropy garbage on the way out.
The finding provides no causal guidance.
And getting back on topic, I think that cultural chauvinism works the same way. The cultures that don't love themselves die.
The cultures that have loved themselves the least - western culture - has thrived and expanded, while the world of the self-loving clans is imploding and exploding.
People can't even motivate themselves to get out of bed with reason alone.
People whose emotional brain centers stop working just sit there and do nothing, even though the rational parts of their brain are working fine.
I don't know, but TFR of atheists is about 1/2 that of the religious in western cultures. We could come up with many reasons why, but that doesn't change the finding.
Ron, what if you had to choose between the richer half of the world's people experiencing this 5% bump, vs the poorer half?