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    #76
    I thought most OECD populations haven't been reproducing themselves on a 1:1 basis for some time, which is why immigration is so important to us. Am I wrong? Certainly they — we — are over-consuming at an insane rate, but that's a different, though possibly related, issue isn't it?

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      #77
      Soviet Russians didn't have big families, and abortion was quite commonplace.

      There are all sorts of reasons why people have big families or not. In Russia, maybe the fact that they'd undergone such hardship during the war - well, throughout the century, really. They got the basics under communism, no-one was short of bread, or education, heating etc. but struggle was fresh in their minds. Plus, they had access to legal, free abortion and it was socially acceptable.

      In the developing/poor nations: children as insurance for old age, the probability of infant mortality, lack of availability of birth control, no telly (a Tanzanian politician made that last joke, and maybe there's something in it; he said the birth rate went up when there was no electricity and similar things were said about power cuts here). As Fussbudget says, with increasing education for girls and increased access to contraception, people tend to space their children and have them slightly later (not Western-late) which reduces the risk of maternal or infant mortality.

      The Haredi community here are the fastest growing ethnic group in Hackney, I said that on Twitter last week and was immediately called "antisemitic" but I'm just stating it as fact. Many Jewish people see it as their duty to swell their numbers and as the only way to guarantee their security. IVF for multiple births has been approved by Rabbis.

      I'm one of five, coming from an Irish Catholic family. My Dad said solemnly that children just "come along". Yeah, OK.

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        #78
        Romania had a very high birth rate, hence all the orphanages (which were mostly filled with kids who weren't actually orphans). This is because Ceausescu was all about the building of the nation and banned contraception and abortion.

        I wouldn't exactly blame socialism as it was a nationalist policy but sure it happened in a nominally socialist country

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          #79
          Patrick Thistle Right, I said I was out but I did just want to point out that my apologies were also intended for Pat who I know doesn’t actually want my grandkids to die; but I was trying in an inestimably clumsy way, to put, I suppose, a human face on the incomprehensible notion of 7 billion people dying. I mean look how aerated OTF (rightly) gets at 70,000 actual UK Covid victims but is seemingly unconcerned about wiping out 10,000 times that number in this notional pandemic. (Did I count my zeroes right there? Whatever.)

          So, here's my public apology if I got it wrong and was shitty.

          And thanks MsD

          Mind, I did warn you all that once someone starts on population.... and 2 pages later…?

          Population is a red herring. World’s population is projected to nearly stop growing by the end of the century. At 11 billion. We could cope with those numbers today if we wanted to. (I mean, not if they just turned up overnight. That would be a bit inconsiderate.)

          It’s capitalism that broke us and climate change will finish the job.
          Last edited by ChrisJ; 02-07-2020, 19:40. Reason: wrong number

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            #80
            Originally posted by Kowalski View Post
            At the present time "the west" has foisted an economic system that allows pharmaceutical companies to patent medication that could benefit the whole of humanity ...
            I don't think that "allows" is the right word, here. "Forces" might be better, since under the current system pharmaceutical companies (like most any other) need to make a profit and the only way they can do that is by owning their products for enough time to do so.

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              #81
              Originally posted by ChrisJ View Post
              It's capitalism that broke us and climate change will finish the job.
              Agree although I would say global capitalism. Globalism was never a great idea if sustaining human civilization in perpetuity was the goal. It wasn't a great idea for overall human happiness either, I reckon. I'm quite certain I could be just as happy or happier only knowing and cultivating my more immediate surroundings and its inhabitants. "Think globally, act locally" is a bit of a con.

              To laverte's point that "we" are more upset about what's coming than what's right now, I would rather say that we're upset because, regardless of relative prosperity or perceptions thereof, we simply don't have a culture that's especially emotionally fulfilling. We're bombarded by huge and disturbing abstractions when we'd be happier just growing our own little gardens.

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                #82
                As for how much individuals should care about world problems, as though that's a measure of virtue, I say boo. Reduce your consumption because you'll probably be happier that way, not because you should be trying to save the world. Be kind to others for the same reason and because they'll be happier too. Educate yourself for the same reason. Base your work life and social life on these principles.

                No one asked to be born here and I'm not going to wish on my deathbed that I'd been a full-time activist because a lot of shitty people did shitty things. Judging your life based on how strongly you resisted irresistible evil forces is its own kind of vanity.

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                  #83
                  Laverte's post gives me hope. Young people of my acquaintance are taking daily action. One has taken a lower salary to work on happiness and wellbeing, with great and literally lifesaving success, another is chairing a residents' group at a local level getting better services for their community. A third quietly donates to various charities from his minimal income, while one has just produced a fantastic art work promoting ATSI culture. I am also lucky enough to know people who have overcome set backs year after year over decades to deliver better outcomes for workers. I am quietly in awe of their resilience when aligned against powerful and wealthy opponents.

                  In Australia a change in voting system might help. Getting either of the "major" parties to commit to that will be tough (and I am an active member of one of them).

                  As for snark about vanity and virtue-signalling, ignore it. At best it is a diversion from those content to let others do the work while they snipe from the sidelines. At its worst (which I have seen on Twitter and Facebook, but not on here) it is a coordinated effort to make people feel guilty about caring and to demean their efforts; to make them feel it is not worth bothering with even the smallest support for change.

                  A woman I know has taken the approach of persuading, with patience and examples, her parents to reconsider long-held political beliefs. If everyone could get just two people to reconsider how they vote it would make a significant difference. Keep talking to parents and grandparents.

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                    #84
                    You've misread me again. It wasn't snark and had nothing to do with local behavior decisions or with excuse-making.

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                      #85
                      What I referred to was caring, meaning to the point of distraction, about world problems. Most people can only manage to do little things like the ones you mentioned. Everyone has the capacity to contribute in a small way. Then I referred to the notion of full-time activism as the appropriate response to a fucked up world. From that you inferred that I just want to "snipe from the sidelines."

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                        #86
                        I'll snipe from the sidelines about virtue-signaling on social media, mind you, but that's a very separate thing from local activism which I fully support and engage in myself.

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                          #87
                          Originally posted by Bruno View Post
                          We're bombarded by huge and disturbing abstractions when we'd be happier just growing our own little gardens.
                          That kind of parochialism seems like a luxury to me. i mean, if your childhood was lived in the shadow of the KKK or of grandparents who died in the Holocaust, the huge and disturbing abstractions are growing right there in front of you. To turn away from them is one option, but it can't and shouldn't be the only one.

                          And is individual happiness really our goal? i'm not sure it's accessible to most of us. The shadows of history are long and they haunt us even in broad daylight. In any case the concept of 'happiness' comes with a lot of baggage. We often associate it with youth and childhood – misremembering our own – and when older folk see how much stress and misery there are among today's children, they may wish that they could turn back the clock, so that their grandkids could experience the mythologised, purified childhood of the olden days.

                          Happiness can also feel like an imperative: this is something that disabled people flag up repeatedly, how they are expected to grin and bear their disability, in order not to appear ungrateful to the people who make an effort to support them. Disabled people would be better served if able-bodied people read more and understood more about how an ableist society functions, and how miserable it can feel to live in that world.

                          i think we'd be happier spending time in each other's gardens, communicating, learning. That's what social media can help us to do, surely?

                          Question: how can you be an active ally to a disadvantaged group without "virtue signalling"? (How i hate that term.) Twitter et al seem to provide a forum for what used to be called consciousness raising – mass activism is impossible without it. The UK has a government that feeds its ideas out to the media first, and the best way to get them to row back on any of their shitty policies is to react with a storm of protest. For instance, 'social media' organising has helped to prevent asylum seekers from being deported from the UK on the sly. Asylum seekers, and the ethnic communities they belong to, have very little political capital of their own, and they are busy enough trying to establish their own right to exist. We have to make their voices heard, to argue for them, or no-one will.

                          And the Tory media are full of people bloviating about stuff that doesn't concern them, rallying their supporters, arguing for oppressed tax dodgers and racist grandads, but for some reason this is not "virtue signalling", it's just politics.
                          Last edited by laverte; 03-07-2020, 09:09.

                          Comment


                            #88
                            Spent all morning wondering whether i should respond to Bruno's posts on this, because I felt strongly, but i wasn't sure I wanted to get into a bad-tempered argument. Thankfully laverte has managed to say what I would have said only much more eloquently and articulately (and comprehensively) (and, hopefully, in such a way that could lead to a reasonable discussion, not the argument I'd have ended up in)

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                              #89
                              Capitalism has always been global. Look at the slave trade. Producing cotton for the mills of Lancashire and sugar for those who worked there.

                              Comment


                                #90
                                Originally posted by laverte View Post
                                That kind of parochialism seems like a luxury to me.
                                Yes it would be. I was suggesting that it's now virtually unattainable, for most people anyway. My hypothesis is that humans are probably "wired" for it more than they are for the global community thing.

                                i mean, if your childhood was lived in the shadow of the KKK or of grandparents who died in the Holocaust, the huge and disturbing abstractions are growing right there in front of you. To turn away from them is one option, but it can't and shouldn't be the only one.
                                I wasn't saying "turn away from them," especially if they're literally unavoidable. Injustice on that scale is obviously hard to cope with or get your head around. Whatever our individual circumstances, we're all confronted to some extent with enormous and hugely disturbing faits accomplis that we can't realistically do much about. There's an extreme argument that you should therefore be doing everything you can, which is unrealistic for most people and, I think, an unfair standard to judge them by. It should be possible to live a relatively virtuous life without being an activist, by treating those around you well and so on.

                                And is individual happiness really our goal? i'm not sure it's accessible to most of us. The shadows of history are long and they haunt us even in broad daylight. In any case the concept of 'happiness' comes with a lot of baggage. We often associate it with youth and childhood – misremembering our own – and when older folk see how much stress and misery there are among today's children, they may wish that they could turn back the clock, so that their grandkids could experience the mythologised, purified childhood of the olden days.

                                Happiness can also feel like an imperative: this is something that disabled people flag up repeatedly, how they are expected to grin and bear their disability, in order not to appear ungrateful to the people who make an effort to support them. Disabled people would be better served if able-bodied people read more and understood more about how an ableist society functions, and how miserable it can feel to live in that world.
                                I see no reason not to have happiness as an ideal as long as you don't view it as an attainable permanent state. I try to set my own parameters for happiness or contentment fairly low. The word I used was "happier" not "happiness" as an end state. We should all try to be happier and that often means not pursuing conventional avenues to a false kind of happiness. You could substitute "more contented" or "greater peace of mind" or "more emotionally/spiritually fulfilled" or something like that.

                                i think we'd be happier spending time in each other's gardens, communicating, learning. That's what social media can help us to do, surely?
                                I was using "garden" loosely to mean your more immediate surroundings in contrast to a more emotionally exhausting global perspective. I feel that one of the biggest shortcomings of the culture I live in is the increasing lack of a strong sense of local community, and I suspect that most people are only capable of conceptualizing a fairly small community, after which a debilitating abstraction starts to set in. The bigger the demands of perspective on that front, the harder it becomes to hold everything together, in one's own mind and in reality. This fact serves the capitalists, who want to divide and rule.

                                Social media could help on the communitarian front, it all depends on who's using it and how. I don't see it helping very much.

                                Question: how can you be an active ally to a disadvantaged group without "virtue signalling"? (How i hate that term.) Twitter et al seem to provide a forum for what used to be called consciousness raising – mass activism is impossible without it. The UK has a government that feeds its ideas out to the media first, and the best way to get them to row back on any of their shitty policies is to react with a storm of protest. For instance, 'social media' organising has helped to prevent asylum seekers from being deported from the UK on the sly. Asylum seekers, and the ethnic communities they belong to, have very little political capital of their own, and they are busy enough trying to establish their own right to exist. We have to make their voices heard, to argue for them, or no-one will.

                                And the Tory media are full of people bloviating about stuff that doesn't concern them, rallying their supporters, arguing for oppressed tax dodgers and racist grandads, but for some reason this is not "virtue signalling", it's just politics.
                                It isn't my view that all social media activism reduces to virtue-signaling, nor that social media can't raise awareness or stimulate action, just like the traditional news media has always been able to do (as it saw fit). Some uses look more like virtue-signaling than others. Earlier I called social media "vanity all the way down" which was obviously a bit hyperbolic, but I do think it's been hijacked by that age-old human failing, and that it has a peculiar ability to make that failing worse.

                                But vanity also connotes doing something in vain and there's plenty of that on the social media activism front. Have there been successes, of course. But overall I think social media gives individuals a skewed view of their capacity to influence, which then gets routinely frustrated and makes them more bitter and reflexively judgmental.

                                Taking the hedgehog's view against the fox, I think there's simply little that people can do to effect lasting progressive change in a capitalist system short of actual revolution and a new order. We've been tinkering around the margins. In recent decades there have been real gains for countless millions of people that I would never want to dismiss or see reversed, yet the bus has all the while been driving toward the same cliff. At the beginning of capitalism, greedy assholes were in charge; today they still are, and we're that much closer to some kind of apocalypse. Along the way there has been a plethora of wars and conquests and genocides and environmental holocausts, with capitalist greed as the driving force every time. Social democracy doesn't stand a chance against sociopathic greed. I wish I had a solution but I don't.
                                Last edited by Bruno; 03-07-2020, 12:13.

                                Comment


                                  #91
                                  Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post
                                  Capitalism has always been global. Look at the slave trade. Producing cotton for the mills of Lancashire and sugar for those who worked there.
                                  It has always been global by inclination; I was referring more to the actual attainment of it, i.e. thoroughgoing globalism as we know it today.

                                  Comment


                                    #92
                                    Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
                                    Spent all morning wondering whether i should respond to Bruno's posts on this, because I felt strongly, but i wasn't sure I wanted to get into a bad-tempered argument. Thankfully laverte has managed to say what I would have said only much more eloquently and articulately (and comprehensively) (and, hopefully, in such a way that could lead to a reasonable discussion, not the argument I'd have ended up in)
                                    laverte is great and so are you.

                                    Comment


                                      #93
                                      Perhaps I am just wired differently, but I cannot see how one can be "happier" in the face of profound injustice without trying to do something about it.

                                      The magnitude of that something obviously differs from person to person and its efficacy is obviously somewhat dependent on forces far beyond any individual's.control.

                                      Comment


                                        #94
                                        Originally posted by laverte
                                        This is a strange time to be thinking about happiness. i'm a wingless bird and the virus is a big hungry cat. In three months i haven't gone further than the park at the end of my street. i live with chronic pain and my illness is degenerative; i am very afraid and i need to say so. Luckily i share my life with someone who understands this, and listens to me. Without her, i wouldn't manage. My friends call, offering sympathy, trying to bring me some cheer, and they do. But it's exhausting and it makes me feel useless.
                                        I'm very sorry to hear this and I can't imagine how much more difficult it's been made by the pandemic. I'm glad you have supportive loved ones. I assume I'll only ever encounter you on OTF where you're the opposite of useless, and I can only thank you for your contributions here.

                                        None of your definitions of happiness makes much sense to me. i want understanding, solidarity, care – things i can give as well as receive. That's what makes me feel alive.
                                        Okay, I would call understanding, solidarity, and care three of the main avenues to what I called happiness. I didn't mean it as selfishly pleasing oneself (if that was how it came across).

                                        i don't understand why a strong community has to be a geographically local one. And i believe we can conceptualise "abstractions" like social justice, and listen to the claims of people who are advancing them, even when those people are very different from us. i guess i'm against empathy.
                                        It could just be me, or people like me. I need real human contact in order not to risk feeling more alienated or detached than is healthy for me. By "abstraction" I don't mean that any of this stuff is or should be incomprehensible or unrelatable, just that it tends more toward an idea than a concrete reality (for me). I can empathize or feel/show compassion all day long, but I personally am unlikely to experience a sense of community and connection unless it's geographically local.

                                        i think you're underselling the value of resisting and subverting dominant ideologies. Where you say "vanity", that most gendered of vices, i might call it capital P Pride. Resisting creates solidarity and community, like the one you are wistful for: it reminds us that we are not alone in the world, left to tend to our own stony little patch of garden without so much as a shovel.
                                        I would just like to know what the resisting can accomplish long-term, because capitalism. If it creates a community of resisters that's hardly nothing. I have my own little community and think we belong to the good guys. I do my bit in my own small way. With the right values along with plenty of luck you can eke out a nice enough garden, it's just sad that we're not growing more people with the right values, again because capitalism. I don't see meaningful inroads against it; if anything it appears more implacable than ever. Assuming climate change is now irreversible, it has already "won."

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