Demographic Winter

[Warrior1979]

Demographic Winter is a documentary that looks at the problem of worldwide falling populations and the consequences. The problem is not limited to the US or our social programs.

Of course not…but it is directly limited to modern human lifestyle. Various isolated indigenous peoples around the world don’t have our modern problems, and continue to live as they have for thousands or tens of thousands of years.

The long and short of it is that we have set up an economic system, across the globe, that must have growth to sustain itself. If we didn’t set up this artificial, resource-intensive, debt-laden system, then shrinking population wouldn’t matter.

They all agree that worldwide falling population is a serious problem, despite the fact that world population is actually growing due to people living longer.

One of the reasons that people are living longer on average is because of modern medicine. It’s not due to health, but rather the extremely expensive, very aggressive intervention by man. In fact, 100 years ago many of my friends and acquaintances would have already been dead from heart attacks, due to their extremely unhealthy lifestyles. Nowadays, instead of taking care of ourselves, we simply expend extraordinary resources to keep ourselves alive while we damage our bodies. This path is clearly unsustainable. In fact, I’d argue it violates natural law.

 

[silentstar]

Of course not…but it is directly limited to modern human lifestyle. Various isolated indigenous peoples around the world don’t have our modern problems, and continue to live as they have for thousands or tens of thousands of years.

The long and short of it is that we have set up an economic system, across the globe, that must have growth to sustain itself. If we didn’t set up this artificial, resource-intensive, debt-laden system, then shrinking population wouldn’t matter.

One of the reasons that people are living longer on average is because of modern medicine. It’s not due to health, but rather the extremely expensive, very aggressive intervention by man. In fact, 100 years ago many of my friends and acquaintances would have already been dead from heart attacks, due to their extremely unhealthy lifestyles. Nowadays, instead of taking care of ourselves, we simply expend extraordinary resources to keep ourselves alive while we damage our bodies. This path is clearly unsustainable. In fact, I’d argue it violates natural law.

I agree with this. I think demographic winter is a stage we need to go through, with approximately 7 billion people on the planet. Eventually we are going to run out of drinkable water, and even what is in the oceans won’t be enough if it were somehow made drinkable. However I also think many people are potentially far more productive into “old age” than they appear to be. A lot of what people think is disability from old age is actually the consequence of poor health habits, such as physical deconditioning, and disease. Over and over it has been shown that keeping your mind and body active is the way to have a good old age and I think the current concept of retirement is not good for many people’s physical or mental health, as well as not being affordable. There is also a difference between becoming ill and being out of the workforce for a few years, and retiring and never going back.

 

[Darryl1958]

This should be pretty obvious.

When individual circumstances do not permit this, then we can be vocal in our support for larger families, both within our own families and among friends.

In our familes, encourage home schooling and help out with our neices and nephews and grandkids.

There’s only one way out of a “demographic winter.”

Not even large families even.
Just families.
Simply put, people of faith need to have faith. They need to have the faith that it takes to bring children into a world with a very uncertain future.

There is not enough money in the world, or in government coffers at least, to pay for the expense and the hard work and the heartaches involved in raising children. And it was very easy for so many people to believe the doomsayers who pronounce our children a liability for the survival of our planet, maybe partially as a sour grapes response to the great expense and difficulty of raising children.

In the end, I guess we don’t even really fully know what the effect of having children or what their future will be. It is an act of faith then, for us to believe that having families is really worth it…

 

[sacredcello]

And it was very easy for so many people to believe the doomsayers who pronounce our children a liability for the survival of our planet, maybe partially as a sour grapes response to the great expense and difficulty of raising children.

This is a very good insight. Thank you for stating it so clearly.

 

[Warrior1979]

And it was very easy for so many people to believe the doomsayers who pronounce our children a liability for the survival of our planet, maybe partially as a sour grapes response to the great expense and difficulty of raising children.

It’s nice to categorize people and make judgments upon them, since it makes people feel good about themselves and their beliefs. My own children are “much more expensive” than others because I had to go halfway across the world to get them, but I hold no sour grapes. I do believe, though, that God gave us intelligence and to ignore it is a sin. I also believe it is a sing to act recklessly when it comes to the resources God gave us.

 

[sacredcello]

It’s nice to categorize people and make judgments upon them, since it makes people feel good about themselves and their beliefs. My own children are “much more expensive” than others because I had to go halfway across the world to get them, but I hold no sour grapes. I do believe, though, that God gave us intelligence and to ignore it is a sin. I also believe it is a sing to act recklessly when it comes to the resources God gave us.

Wait, I didn’t think that Darryl was categorizing or making judgments. My experience is that it was pamphlets like “Population Bomb” that got people to believe that children are like walking biohazards. I am guilty of having bought into that mindset, but then I wasn’t raised Catholic. I really thought that I was doing the world a favor by not having children. This conveniently affirmed my view that contraception was perfectly fine and “good for the planet.” Now, as a Catholic, I see how sick that viewpoint really was, yet it continues to be the dominant one in the culture.

 

[Della]

It’s nice to categorize people and make judgments upon them, since it makes people feel good about themselves and their beliefs. My own children are “much more expensive” than others because I had to go halfway across the world to get them, but I hold no sour grapes. I do believe, though, that God gave us intelligence and to ignore it is a sin. I also believe it is a sing to act recklessly when it comes to the resources God gave us.

Children are never a deficit. We don’t have to abort children or contracept them out of existence in order to maintain a proper balance between using the earth’s resources and preserving them. All it takes is a little intelligence and planning. The “Population Bomb” mentality, that we have to avoid populating the earth in order to save it, is a load of rubbish. It was a flawed book based on a flawed premise, but it allowed many to do what they wanted to do without guilt–live for themselves alone. This was especially true of women’s groups that popped up in the 60’s. It was all about “freeing” oneself from the “drudgery” of caring for children. It’s right there in all the popular magazines and books of the time for anyone to see. Future generations, if there are any, will castigate ours for slaughtering millions for no good reason. They’ll wonder how we could have been so blind. We, like the towns Jesus condemned for their unbelief, will have to answer for our very great sin of killing off a whole generation of our own children. It isn’t going to be pretty.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The long and short of it is that we have set up an economic system, across the globe, that must have growth to sustain itself. If we didn’t set up this artificial, resource-intensive, debt-laden system, then shrinking population wouldn’t matter.

I’m not sure of this. Less resource-intensive,debt-laden societies have died out or simply been absorbed by more prolific peoples. Supposedly there is a terminal age demographic from which there is no return.

 

[JimG]

I’m not sure of this. Less resource-intensive,debt-laden societies have died out or simply been absorbed by more prolific peoples. Supposedly there is a terminal age demographic from which there is no return.

Yes, there are a lot of extinct towns in Kansas which had plenty of resources. What they lacked was people. People are the one essential resource.

 

[mathematoons]

I haven’t seen the documentary, but I’ve done lots of research on the topic. It just proves that the Church is right in its teachings about contraception and abortion.

According to the United Nations Population Division, no human society has ever recovered from a fertility rate below 1.3 children per woman. Many European countries are already below that. Of course, the people next door will take over…

God let the Israelites get conquered when they abandoned Him, if I remember the Old Testament correctly. I think history is going to repeat itself unless we get back on track!