Civilization's Silent Killer

Developed-world consciousness is in demographic decline. If people in developed countries don't have more babies, the developing world will inherit the earth. Does a dystopian future await?

The Handmaid’s Tale is truly dystopian. So is the death of the West. Source: Mark Schneider

The developed world’s demographic crisis continues. The YouTuber Hoe-math argues that too much of the West’s cultural consciousness is stuck in the First Tier of the Spiral Dynamics model. If that’s true, too many people of dating and mating age are prioritizing emotional security, material success, and individual autonomy over our species’ biological imperatives and far-sighted holistic values.

So let’s return to Spiral Dynamics for decoding help, not as metaphysics, but as heuristics. It will help us map out the civilizational crisis before us.

Refresher chart below. You should be able to click on this image to enlarge it.

One simple observation is that people at the Orange and Green value stages have far fewer children today, and we can extrapolate from this. The trouble is, there will almost certainly be no mass transition to the Second Tier, in which one might not only integrate some of the atavistic (Beige-Purple) and deontic (Blue) values of child rearing, but also value the continued development of human beings in their interdependence, complexity, and progress (Yellow-Turquoise).

Yet some estimate that fewer than 10,000 people worldwide have transitioned to the Second Tier. But even if there were 1,000,000 at that stage, the problem would stand—unless there were a way to catalyze a mass exodus into the Second Tier.

As the population declines, even fewer will make the quantum leap to Yellow. Demography is destiny. And liberal democracies are all in demographic freefall. Short of any sudden mass consciousness-raising event that would grow the Tier Two ranks, way too many people are working through Tier One.

There are almost certainly cognitive constraints on leaping to Tier Two.

Not only are there cognitive and spiritual limitations to any mass transition to Yellow, but the developed world’s population numbers started to crash right as the Boomers aged. Gen X is now almost too old to reproduce. Millennials are not only a smaller group but also have fewer children. Matters are the worst for Gen Z, despite being at peak reproductive age right now.

What’s the problem, Millennials and Gen Z?

Not Hyperbole, Hypergamy.

Too many young men have turned away from dating apps and toward readily available pornography. Why? All the available data on dating apps shows the deep problem with hypergamy. That is: Men are willing to date women who are on their level, but too many women are not willing to do the same.

On a 1-10 rating scale, where 10 is most attractive, men at 1-7 are willing to date women at 1-7. But women at 1-3 want to date men at 4-6, and women at 4-6 want to date men from 7-10. (I’m being generous.) Today, statistically speaking, the only way for men to meet suitable women is to transform themselves from 4-6 to 7-10, which is hard, if not impossible. All the men from 7-10 are getting laid, but too few of them are settling down, because: Why would they? They can maintain modern harems.

In short, a small group of guys takes advantage of women’s deep selectivity bias.

More women are competing for the attention of that small group, and then conclude that men are bastards. Men aren’t bastards so much as they are either rational philanderers (20 percent) or incels (80 percent). It’s the hypergamy, stupid.

Here’s another view of the problem:

Studies from apps like Tinder show similar patterns, with women swiping right on only about 4-5 percent of men, compared to men swiping on 50-60 percent of women, amplifying the hypergamy effect through unequal selectivity.

It will take a strategic approach from a few Yellow geniuses to reframe and leverage Tier One values in ways that appeal to those trapped in Tier 1’s counterproductive value loops. Otherwise, people will only start having more babies when civilization collapses and extreme poverty returns.

To compound matters, experts and elites have taken extraordinary measures to ensure equal opportunity in higher education and employment for women, so much so that women are outpacing and out-earning men in more fields. But deep in their bones, women are biologically programmed to desire men who make more money, which again reduces the number of desirable men.

Using Daniel Kahneman’s shorthand for two thinking systems:

• System 1: Fast, automatic, intuitive, and emotional thinking that operates quickly with little effort

• System 2: Slow, deliberate, logical, and effortful thinking that requires conscious attention
  

• System 1: I want to pair-bond, have babies, and care for my babies with a man who will protect and provide for us.

• System 2: I want to delay or forego having children so I can realize the progressive vision of a successful, independent woman.

Deep in the psyches of most young women, Systems 1 and 2 are locked in mortal combat, and System 2 is winning.

Sacralizing Procreation

Economist Bryan Caplan wrote a rather Orange book called Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, but, persuasive as his case might be to other Orange-oriented readers, Caplan is a poster boy for people at Orange, which is heavy on System 2. Logos alone will not inspire enough couples to have kids, and, of course, the problem is even bigger: We also need more young people to meet and form long-term pair bonds so they can start discussing having more kids.

Cultural regression to Blue—religious duty and knowing one’s place—is unideal, but would likely help with the birthrate. Unfortunately, though Purple, Red, and Blue tend to have more babies, they also seek to impose or create social orders that most of us prefer not to live under. (read: Gilead, Sharia Law)

As the economist Robin Hanson writes:

Most likely, our world civilization will peak in population in about three decades, and its economy will peak soon after, or maybe even before, depending on how bad Africa is at substituting for Western folks in the world economy. From then on rates of innovation will shrink faster than does the economy, and our civ will continue to fall and slow for centuries, until replaced by rising insular fertile religious subcultures (e.g., Amish, Haredim).

And don’t forget about those prepared to conquer the dhimmi through their women’s wombs. Ironically, those women who prefer a childless existence could eventually be overwhelmed by developing-world migrants with Handmaid’s Tale values.

Psychosocial atavism accompanies the willingness to have more kids.

How do we make the sacralization of motherhood a woman’s highest value amid the onslaught of conflicting, counterproductive First Tier messages? Here’s what young women are picking up today.

• Red: Get paid to get laid on OF, gurl. Otherwise, when it comes to dating men, you’re the table, so make sure he pays.

• Orange: Focus on your career and never depend on a man.

• Green: Live your truth and resist the patriarchy. Or: Live your truth as a trans man.

Here’s what men hear today:

• Red: If you can get it, take all of it, bro. If you can’t, watch porn and wait.

• Orange: You should focus on making money till you find someone who wants kids. (Otherwise, be wary of getting married. Today’s kniving women will take away your kids and your money.)

• Green: We should invite in more immigrants if we want more people. It doesn’t matter where they come from, as long as they’re not white.

These are examples of counterproductive First Tier messages. (Or should I say, counter-reproductive?)

Absent any successful multi-pronged approach that persuades or incentivizes people—particularly women, who must carry children—we might be the last of the large generations. That means we will watch our kids steward the developed world’s slow suicide as Developing-Worlders and Muslims colonize the developed world without having to fire a shot.

Does this augur a new Dark Age?

A common refrain among our friends on the Left (and many on the “new Right”) is that we need to make having children more affordable, which means more government goodies. But this presents two problems: First, Scandinavian countries provide more lavish subsidies for child care, etc., and their demographic trends are even less promising; Second, people who take greater advantage of welfare programs are net consumers, which means they're not necessarily the sorts of people you want to have more kids.

It’s all very concerning, but people might come to the point that something unseemly seems reasonable as things fall apart. Maybe something totally out of left field will emerge, such as breeding orphanages for gene-edited superbeings. Short of full-stack genetic and social engineering, though, I have a pragmatic proposal to address the problem of developed-nation denizens meeting, dating, settling, and procreating.

Level With Me

In my last post on this subject, “The Natalist’s Dilemma,” I wrote:

So we will have to navigate those waters, too—between the Scylla of barren feminism and the Charybdis of patriarchy—elevating mothers and motherhood without turning America into Gilead or the World State.

Maybe there’s an app for that. For now, we’ll call it “Level with Me.”

Do you remember the early 2000s website “Hot-or-Not”? There were two ways to interact with the site: either you could upload your picture (no name) and have site visitors rate you as Hot or Not, which yielded a percentage score. Otherwise, you could flip through a continuous stream of pictures, rate people, and see whether the community agreed.

For “Level With Me,” we could probably come up with something less binary, such as a 10-point scale, but the point would be that the subscriber community would rate everyone pictured based on their looks.

But here’s the catch: users are only served profiles of others who are similarly rated by the community. So, women in the 3-4 range would only ever see photos of men in the 3-4 range—and vice versa. You might even offer women the app at a lower cost or for free, so they have an incentive to pursue something other than 8s and 9s on Hinge. (Screening for personality, income, and education can follow on after the potential connections are made. But users are served profiles of people on their level of attractiveness, which might be appealing to incels and femmecels, as well as women who feel used and discarded by the alphas on Tinder.)

Will female users confront the brutal truth of more realistic sexual sorting? One can hope. Would such an app be a silver bullet? Certainly not. Following Spiral Dynamics' rationale, most problems with the West's demographic decline are a mix of cognitive and cultural limitations—not just the perverse incentives of dating apps.

Still, an app couldn’t hurt.

Okay, software developers. You can save civilization and create “Level With Me.”