Who said they are "living the life they want"? And who said they feel"empowered"?
And even if they said those thing, who said it might not just be a cope?
Because polls and research says people report feeling (and being) lonelier and more depressed than ever - with clear increasing trend.
Which I think we should take into account before rejoicing about people living their best life, and everything being great.
But then I read sites like reddit r/antiwork or whatever and see all the salt, with people making sweeping generalized statements about how the entire millenial generation has been screwed over by boomers and will never move out of their mom's basement.
In fact, this reminds me of Slate Star Codex's I can tolerate anything except the outgroup [0], where the author talks about how he doesn't interact with conservatives even though he's aware that half of the US is composed of them.
[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
> That means the Red Tribe feels intensely patriotic about “their” country, and the Blue Tribe feels like they’re living in fortified enclaves deep in hostile territory.
> Here is a popular piece published on a major media site called America: A Big, Fat, Stupid Nation. Another: America: A Bunch Of Spoiled, Whiny Brats. Americans are ignorant, scientifically illiterate religious fanatics whose “patriotism” is actually just narcissism. You Will Be Shocked At How Ignorant Americans Are, and we should Blame The Childish, Ignorant American People. > Needless to say, every single one of these articles was written by an American and read almost entirely by Americans. Those Americans very likely enjoyed the articles very much and did not feel the least bit insulted.
> On both sides, “American” can be either a normal demonym, or a code word for a member of the Red Tribe.
Fascinating. I think "white people" operates the same way today.
> > Don’t message me if you’re a sexist white guy
> And my first thought was “Wait, so a sexist black person would be okay? Why?”
> (The girl in question was white as snow)
> Around the time the Ferguson riots were first starting, there were a host of articles with titles like Why White People Don’t Seem To Understand Ferguson, Why It’s So Hard For Whites To Understand Ferguson, and White Folks Listen Up And Let Me Tell You What Ferguson Is All About, this last of which says:
> > Social media is full of people on both sides making presumptions, and believing what they want to believe. But it’s the white folks that don’t understand what this is all about. Let me put it as simply as I can for you […]
> > No matter how wrong you think Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown were, I think we can all agree they didn’t deserve to die over it. I want you white folks to understand that this is where the anger is coming from. You focused on the looting….”
> And on a hunch I checked the author photos, and every single one of these articles was written by a white person.
> White People Are Ruining America? White. White People Are Still A Disgrace? White. White Guys: We Suck And We’re Sorry? White. Bye Bye, Whiny White Dudes? White. Dear Entitled Straight White Dudes, I’m Evicting You From My Life? White. White Dudes Need To Stop Whitesplaining? White. Reasons Why Americans Suck #1: White People? White.
> We’ve all seen articles and comments and articles like this. Some unsavory people try to use them to prove that white people are the real victims or the media is biased against white people or something. Other people who are very nice and optimistic use them to show that some white people have developed some self-awareness and are willing to engage in self-criticism.
> But I think the situation with “white” is much the same as the situation with “American” – it can either mean what it says, or be a code word for the Red Tribe.
> (except on the blog Stuff White People Like, where it obviously serves as a code word for the Blue tribe. I don’t know, guys. I didn’t do it.)
> I realize that’s making a strong claim, but it would hardly be without precedent. When people say things like “gamers are misogynist”, do they mean the 52% of gamers who are women? Do they mean every one of the 59% of Americans from every walk of life who are known to play video or computer games occasionally? No. “Gamer” is a coded reference to the Gray Tribe, the half-branched-off collection of libertarianish tech-savvy nerds, and everyone knows it. As well expect that when people talk about “fedoras”, they mean Indiana Jones. Or when they talk about “urban youth”, they mean freshmen at NYU. Everyone knows exactly who we mean when we say “urban youth”, and them being young people who live in a city has only the most tenuous of relations to the actual concept.
> And I’m saying words like “American” and “white” work the same way. Bill Clinton was the “first black President”, but if Herman Cain had won in 2012 he’d have been the 43rd white president. And when an angry white person talks at great length about how much he hates “white dudes”, he is not being humble and self-critical.
I think some of them probably are pretty salty in private - at least about some things - but they wouldn't show that saltiness to their coworkers.
Choices have consequences, but humans have the right to make their choices, hopefully fully informed. Who are we to tell someone their reproductive choice was wrong? That’s their decision. You can do everything right and still lose. That’s life.
A good example of this is Israel - the Haredim (ultra-Orthodox), roughly 13% of Israel's population, prioritise large families over individual choice, and are booming; secular Jews, (by and large) do the opposite, and while currently around 40% of Israel's population, are slowly shrinking; it is predicted that in 2065, close to 50% of all Israeli children will be from Haredi families, only 35% from non-Haredi Jewish families (secular or moderately religious).
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-05-22/ty-article-opinio...
In fact, I see this attitude so often online that I believe it's some sort of logical fallacy akin to the Malthusian trap, that "they" (for some definition of "they" as chosen by the doomer) will eventually take over lest we reprioritize having kids, when in reality the entire world's population is dropping, and it's distributed mostly equally, even in areas where there are some of the highest birth rates in the world historically, like India, China, and Nigeria.
It isn't universally true. There is no evidence the Haredim are becoming atheistic, nor the Old Order Amish. Yes, there are defectors from both (mostly not to atheism, mostly to more moderate versions of the respective religion), but not enough to counteract the high birth rates.
> Not having children is a function of a society's wealth (which is then correlated to education which is the correlated to non-religiosity), not (necessarily) their religiosity.
The Exclusive Brethren [0] are notoriously well-off, yet they continue to have large families, and there's no evidence of a high defection rate of their children.
> when in reality the entire world's population is dropping, and it's distributed mostly equally, even in areas where there are some of the highest birth rates in the world historically, like India, China, and Nigeria.
According to OECD data, [1] in 2005, Israel's TFR was 2.84. By 2017, it had grown to 3.11. From there, it declined to a low of 2.90 in 2020 (probably in part COVID-related), but by 2021 had rebounded to 3.00, and I expect it will probably be above 3.00 when the 2022 data is released. Israel's TFR in 2017 (3.11) was higher than its TFR in 1981 (3.06). So Israel is at least one counterexample to the narrative of a uniform global population decline.
[0] https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/the-great-brethren-migr...
This is a misconception based on recent experience in the west. In the Muslim world, the trend has been the exact opposite. Neither of my grandmothers (one from a well-to-do urban family, another from a village) wore hijab. In their old age, they covered part of their hair with their sari, as is the south Asian custom: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sheikh_Hasina_Darshana_.... None of my aunts wore hijab. But several of my cousins do. There’s a video of the President of Egypt laughing at the prospect of a hijab law in 1958: https://youtu.be/brlFxRYCggE?si=jBZ97TCpz3P7LASC. Today, 90% of Egyptian women wear a headscarf.
> Not having children is a function of a society's wealth (which is then correlated to education which is the correlated to non-religiosity), not (necessarily) their religiosity.
Affluence allows individual independence, which tends to weaken religiosity. But it’s the religiosity (and social policy—in most societies, the two are closely connected) that then drives reproductive choices. Religious Pakistan has almost double the fertility rate of secular Bangladesh, despite similar GDP per capita. Muslim Americans have more affluence and more education, but also much higher birth rates than both white Americans generally, and non-college educated white Americans in places where that group is secular and not evangelical. West Virginia has a comparable fertility rate to Washington State or Colorado. Oregon has one of the lowest fertility rates, despite being relatively poor and rural. (In red states, you can see a stark contrast between places that are populated by descendants of Germans, or British planters, and those that are populated by Scots-Irish.)
I agree with your overall conclusion, but nowadays Bangladesh's GDP per capita is significantly higher than Pakistan's, so that part of your argument no longer holds. And, Bangladesh's economy is now growing significantly faster than Pakistan's (in 2022, 7.1% vs 4.7%), so it seems likely that Bangladesh will keep on pulling ahead.
This is another instance of that type of argument: if, in the long-run, collectivist cultures grow and individualist cultures shrink, that would be evidence that collectivism is more correct than individualism.
Of course, an individual need not care about such arguments. An individual might be happy to be communist, non-communist, religious, non-religious, individualist, non-individualist, whatever, even if that was in some objective sense wrong. They might just not care if it was.
A lot of people don't have kids because they simply can't afford it. My mom stayed at home while my dad worked (unskilled job), and we still lived okay financially wise, good luck doing that today. A lot of people have fertility issues, and it's growing due to our ever more polluted environment
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/19/growing-s...