"Outside influences that skew our self-awareness include wanting and needing validation of the self by others (that need doesn't end in childhood!), and many of us will find ourselves tailoring our actual selves to fit someone else's expectations. This too will engender a sense of self that feels inauthentic or fraudulent."

Welcome to the human race. You are attempting to buck a million years of evolutionary biology which has selected for functioning in family and community groups rather than as Ronin, which seems to be the 21st century ideal.

http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

At some point in time I realized that I was an asshole and that wasn't going to change, hence the name.

You are attempting to buck a million years of evolutionary biology which has selected for functioning in family and community groups
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Yes, well, as even more and more conservatives are grudgingly realizing, we cannot afford to keep doubling the global population every 50 years (which is precisely what's been happening since 1927 or so - even the Depression and WWII didn't really slow things down!). Therefore, we HAVE to push people, gently but firmly - preferably only in the social sense - to reproduce far less and consume far less. I.e., greed for things, including babies, that we just don't need may be a strong part of human nature, but our survival depends on bucking it.

Not to mention that girls who are convinced they want nothing more than to drop out of middle school, get married, and start families would be considered perfectly normal in many Third World countries, but should THAT be acceptable? I would hope no one would say yes.

I take shits in a toilet-that too bucks away millions of years of evolutionary biology. In fact I've read studies that western toilets are actually bad for your asshole.

I love my 21ist century ideals.

I s'pose this is a hair off topic lenona, and I don't know if you live in the US or not, but "to reproduce far less"?
Really? We are already below replacement, and only close because of immigration. Here's an interesting take from Singapore, about brith rates in the industrial world:

"The replacement rate—the reproduction rate that keeps a population stable—for developed countries is 2.1, yet nearly half the world’s population has birth rates lower than that. The U.S. has a total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.0—nearly the replacement rate—with Hispanic immigrants leading in birth rates. The U.S. is aging but not as fast as many other countries. A 2010 census showed that 31.4 million Americans live alone—27% of all households (equal to the percentage of childless couples). Living alone allows people to pursue individual freedom, exert personal control and go through self-realization, but these people have fewer children.

Western European countries have low fertility rates, below the replacement rate of 2.1. Germany: 1.4 (its total population is 81.9 million, of which 8.2% are foreigners). Holland: 1.8
(16.5 million, of which 4.4% are foreigners). Belgium: 1.8 (10.8 million, of which 9.8% are foreigners). Spain: 1.4 (46.1 million, of which 12.4% are foreigners). Italy: 1.4 (60.2 million, of which 7.1% are foreigners), the Pope’s views notwithstanding. Sweden, which provides deep support for parents, has a high TFR of 1.9 (9.4 million, of which 6.4% are foreigners), but that’s still below the replacement rate. Ireland and the U.K. also have high TFRs, at 2.1 and 1.9, respectively, but these rates are derived from non-European immigrant parents."
From Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/currentevents/2012/10/16/warning-bell-for-developed-countries-declining-birth-rates/

So if half the world is not just below, but FAR below replacement, I don't think it's a problem that can be solved by appealing to logic... AS IT IS THAT VERY LOGIC THAT HAS TURNED IT LOW.

As for the teen birthrate... dropping:
Data from the Natality Data File, National Vital Statistics System

The U.S. teen birth rate declined 9 percent from 2009 to 2010, reaching a historic low at 34.3 births per 1,000 women aged 15–19; the rate dropped 44 percent from 1991 through 2010.
Teen birth rates by age and race and Hispanic origin were lower in 2010 than ever reported in the United States.
Fewer babies were born to teenagers in 2010 than in any year since 1946. If the teen birth rates observed in 1991 had not declined through 2010 as they did, there would have been an estimated 3.4 million additional births to teens during 1992–2010.
Teen birth rates fell in all but three states during 2007–2010. Teen birth rates by state vary significantly, reflecting in part differences in the population composition of states by race and Hispanic origin.

Finally, the world population clock people have a growth rate that is in stark decline, per the UN: The latest United Nations projections indicate that world population will nearly stabilize at just above 10 billion persons after 2062.

And their projection is ambitious... it will likely be below that.

The key issue for most independent countries, is that THEIR OWN population starts to fall, then who supports the elderly, when there are less kids, and who pays taxes?

The self actualization question is IMPORTANT to the individual, but in aggregate, it usually causes enough navel gazing, that people decide not to procreate, instead turned inward.

I think the whole "Therefore, we HAVE to push people, gently but firmly - preferably only in the social sense - to reproduce far less and consume far less." happens on it's own with education... but as an idea that everyone is exposed to, is fairly new in the world...

It was in the mid 60's that population growth started to fall.

/tangent. ;)

I don't think I can buck it, but I can account for my inclinations and limitations and plan with them in mind.

It's the same awareness of limitations that prompts prudent people to make out a will, create a medical directive, not get loaded and then handle firearms... .

It is possible to have negative population growth, and still have a strong sense of family and community, The Japanese are a good example.

Libs still believe that we can change human nature through social conditioning. I don't,

"Finally, the world population clock people have a growth rate that is in stark decline, per the UN: The latest United Nations projections indicate that world population will nearly stabilize at just above 10 billion persons after 2062.

[...]

The key issue for most independent countries, is that THEIR OWN population starts to fall, then who supports the elderly, when there are less kids, and who pays taxes?"

What thinking, if anything, suggests that we can and should sustain this population level?

Or that peoe are needed (or inclined) at the historical numbers, to care for the elderly at a time when tasks (including biometric info collection) are increasingly automated?

The question, Michelle, is: Who Pays For It? Any of it. Without a taxpayer base larger than a non-taxpayer base, there can be no automation, because nobody pays for it, and it is astonishingly costly.

Isab mentioned Japan, and east asia is going to be on the forefront of this contraction. If nobody is there to pay taxes... then there aren't any.
If the social nets for everyone cannot be paid for, they won't be.

Then you get the interesting sprial down, where elderly people freeze to death, because there is no-one to come check on them, houses fall into dereliction, becasue no-one lives there, and there is no need for schools, becasue there aren't any student. There are spots in Japan that are depopulated, because of that spiral. China faces the same, because their culture and the one child law produced a generation of guys with no wives to be had. China is aging faster than any of them.

It's true that these sorts of contractions will happen, but that doesn't mean they are without pain. Everyone talks of a smaller sustainable population, but it's ugly as it happens. A lot of people, even in staunch family cultures, die alone, unless they have a lot of money. I've had the unpleasant task of dealing with what comes after on several occasions, even though I was unrelated.

On the other hand? Who knows, ALL of these trends can be reversed in a generation, and that's why all the predictions are funky. Humans. Are powerful strange.

But all that is certainly far afield of the original question of people coming to terms with themselves, though not unrelated.

"Not to mention that girls who are convinced they want nothing more than to drop out of middle school, get married, and start families would be considered perfectly normal in many Third World countries, but should THAT be acceptable? I would hope no one would say yes.

Posted by: lenona at February 26, 2014 11:17 AM

I haven't seen a better example of 1970's regurgitated Malthusian bullshit since my college days.

How about, instead of your ernest liberal finger wagging, we make having children young and out of wedlock, (or older with no daddy in the picture) a personal problem, and an economic one, by yanking the government sugar daddy out of the equation, and get back to immediate and real financial and social consequences for poor economic and personal choices?

We have bred a generation of idiots who think personal choices are a "right" while the cost of those choices is foisted off on the tax payers.

You will be amazed how many economically destructive personal choices will come to a screeching halt, when gubmint stops picking up the tab.

My real me is a hermit crab. A bitchy, pleasure-loving hermit crab. I too had few friends, but I saw that the popular people seemed to turn on each other in a heartbeat, whereas my few friends actually were & are my friends.

I was hoping to read more comments from people discussing their own real thems, but this topic seems to have burned out, smothered by all this overpopulation blahblah, I guess. So back into the shell with a pizza and Despicable Me 2.

Swiss, my understanding is that generally speaking automation lowers production costs and the need for people.

PA is going through a version of aging out, especially western PA - lots of infrastructure and elderly people. ConsolidTin public services has been too long in coming due to politics but inevitable due to cash.

I don't think this (1970s onward)
economy in the US is conducive to a national culture of large, geographically close, well raised families - not to the extent needed to avoid the care-for-the-aging crisis I am concerned about.

PricklyPear - anchovies?

" a personal problem, and an economic one, by yanking the government sugar daddy out of the equation, and get back to immediate and real financial and social consequences for poor economic and personal choice"

Bullshit. I've traveled most of Latin America where they don't have a social net and that doesn't stop poor people from having kids they can't feed. I'm sick of this argument that if we cut welfare/social services it will make people more responsible. It won't .

Personally I think welfare subsidizes us into having less crime but an argument can be made that it causes more crime. On this matter it's more of a hunch on my end.

In the U.S. we've taken children from eastern seaboard cities, put them on trains, shipped them to the Midwest, and auctioned them off to be farm labor. (Orphan Trains, PBS)

We created the juvenile justice system because children were running wild in city streets, committing crimes to survive, and people noticed that putting them in prison gave them the wrong kind of teachers and education.

For more reading, this is a good place to start:
http://criminal.findlaw.com/juvenile-justice/development-of-the-juvenile-justice-system.html

We've also taken newborns (such as my mother) from unmarried women and girls and sold them to families in lieu of adoption. (Gray market babies)

http://theadoptedones.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/1950s-black-market-babies/

So, can you help with context, Michelle? My own mom was adopted in the mid 40s, but I understand that it was up and up, according to her... I am biological to her, but my sisters and other family are also adopted...

The things you speak of happened 60+ years ago... what exactly are you saying? In most respects it was in another century. Society was different in many, many ways.

I'm saying many components of the current approach - WIC and other public funding for unwed and otherwise poor mothers - are in part informed by what we've already tried and an effort to avoid what was disfiguringly harmful about those approaches.

Any suggestions about what to do going forward would do well to be informed about our past going back before 1880 (when the Orphan trains were first run).

"It was in the mid 60's that population growth started to fall."

On the other hand, THIS. Note the graph.

Which will end with the Age of Oil, because today's population is dependent on fossil fuels to distribute food and key elements of infrastructure.

In Japan there is a very low rate of unwed motherhood.

Abortion is freely and readily available.

Their social welfare system is very basic, and they don't value family unity funded by the government.

There are also hundreds of orphanages in Japan, with thousands of children.

In most ways, I find this superior to what we have in the US.

The orphanages raise these kids in a structured environment not in abusive, or dysfunctional single parent homes.

The orphan trains in the US were far superior to these kids remaining in the cities they came from. The cities in the US were a terrible environment for child survival with polio, typhoid, and measles spreading like wildfire, not to mention dirty air, and water,
The farms and ranches of the midwest, and the west were much better for the kids.

Rural life was healthier, and the people back then, not being idiots, knew this.

" Which will end with the Age of Oil, because today's population is dependent on fossil fuels to distribute food and key elements of infrastructure.

Posted by: Radwaste at February 27, 2014 8:12 AM"

Maybe or maybe not, because right now there is no real need to go to nuclear powered vehicles, so it is hard to say, what will replace fossil fuels, and when it will be necessary.
Lot of good work being done on small sustainable nuclear power plants.

Just like people worried what would replace whale oil, in 1800, we don't need to either build or burn those bridges yet.

"The orphanages raise these kids in a structured environment not in abusive, or dysfunctional single parent homes."

Japanese orphanages are better than single parent homes? Are you fucking kidding me. You know they are as secretive as fuck, always trying to save face.

"The orphan trains in the US were far superior to these kids remaining in the cities they came from"

The good old days when kids were shipped off in trains to an idyllic farm life with fresh country air.

Dude you know their situations were fucking horrible and there is a reason many eventually returned to the city as adults.

Dude you know their situations were fucking horrible and there is a reason many eventually returned to the city as adults.

Posted by: Ppen at February 27, 2014 11:43 AM

Some might of returned because, of you know," jobs" and certainly some were treated badly, but amazingly, they lived to tell about it, while most of those same orphans would have died in the cities on the east coast, if they had stayed there.
The flu epidemic hit the cities particularly hard at the end of World War I.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic

I knew three people who had come out on those trains to Wyoming. None of them returned to the east coast.

Pretending that all the orphans in New York city were sitting around enjoying tea and crumpets with the Vanderbilts , until they were so rudely yanked out of their idyllic city paradise, is just propaganda designed to scare people into thinking that people were both evil and stupid a hundred years ago.

We are so much more "caring" and enlightened now, even if the actual measurable outcomes, are worse.

This is the famous "null set" comparison we have been through so many times on this board.

The death rates for children in the USA were sky high in the cities, a hundred years ago, And anyone who bothers to read up on medical history knows this.

You do know,don't you, that antibiotics were not even invented until World War II, and there wasn't a vaccine for polio until the 1950's?

Death rates from TB were also extremely high, and that disease also had no effective treatment until WW2.

People were advised to move West into higher and drier air. Worked for a few. Most still died.

I don't know where the rant about the Japanese is coming from. In my opinion, they are better parents than most Americans but they have a high rate of alcoholism and social disfunction, much like many of the Native Americans.

They have decided that Orphanages are better for the kids, than huge social service programs, and I believe them to be correct.

"They have decided that Orphanages are better for the kids, than huge social service programs, and I believe them to be correct."

Posted by: Isab at February 27, 2014 12:32 PM

I am interested in any studies you can point to.

Regardless of the health benefits of fresh country air, I will always find *something* dehumanizing and harrowing about auctioning off another human being to be a laborer.

What stands out for me is that even the Japanese, known for a culture of honor (flip side: public shame) have so many out of wedlock births it requires orphanages to care for the children, rather than extended family.

If a culture with a strong vein of public shaming still has so many out of wedlock births - I don't see how public shaming is a viable approach to significantly curbing out of wedlock births in the US, which is much larger and has an identity built around being more individualistic.

Are the Japanese orphanages publicly funded? If so, is the approach financially more sound than giving adults public assistance with which to raise children?

Are the Japanese children raised in Japanese orphanages emotionally well, or disproportionately dysfunctional?

I think a civilized society will always be challenged with questions of how to reduce the occurrence of and care for children who are not primarily privately supported and raised.
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I apologize for whatever typos are going to magically become apparent to me only after I hit the "submit" button.

And PricklyPear? I still want pizza. Thanks for that. ;)

"Pretending that all the orphans in New York city were sitting around enjoying tea and crumpets with the Vanderbilts "

And yet nobody has said that. There is no doubt city life was tough and so was country life. If you don't have loving parents you are fucked. People will not treat you nicely even if you are breathing fresh country air. Your situation won't feel any better because at least you're not getting sick like little Johnny.

As for TB, and your other little facts I'm aware of it. My father lived a rural life and almost everyone in his family died of TB.

And the measurable outcomes now are not "worse". I love those fallacies of how people were better before because you know they really picked themselves up by their bootstraps. There is nothing new under the sun its just packaged differently.

And what are your metrics anyways? I know I sure as hell wouldn't agree with them.

Kids get treated better and people are having less of them. Fuck anyone who thinks people did things better for their kids in the good old days.

As to the Japanese well good luck living in a society where being an "other" will have you ostracized. They are probably the most homogenous race I can think of-things go smoothly because everyone is so similar to everyone else. My ass doesn't wanna live like that.

And there is no way an orphanage is better than at least having a mom around. No matter how much discipline you put into a kid nothing beats at least having a mom-even if she is a shitty one.

(And trust me I had a real shitty one).

"As to the Japanese well good luck living in a society where being an "other" will have you ostracized. They are probably the most homogenous race I can think of-things go smoothly because everyone is so similar to everyone else. My ass doesn't wanna live like that."

Posted by: Ppen at February 27, 2014 9:33 PM

I think that's key. I read that Iceland was exceptionally harmonious until a relatively recent wave I immigration, at which time domestic violence and poverty issues rose significantly.

It takes something to allow for and integrate people who are different - it especially requires fortitude to constructively respond to a society's growing pains.

" I love those fallacies of how people were better before because you know they really picked themselves up by their bootstraps. "

How is that a fallacy? I fail to see how being a lifelong dependent is any better, either physically or morally, than having self-determination. Yes, there are people who will decide to spend their lives sponging off of others. I fail to see any moral reason why that has to be my problem. They can do what they want in their own space, but once they expect me to start paying for their choices, then fuck them.

"It takes something to allow for and integrate people who are different - it especially requires fortitude to constructively respond to a society's growing pains."

I think there's more to it than that. The bulk of all of the nations on Earth were originally formed around the concept of an extended tribe, where everyone is connected by blood. Those nations have huge problems with immigration; as has been pointed out up-thread, you can move to Japan at the age of 1 and spend the rest of your life there, but you'll always be gajin. The U.S. is one of the few nations on Earth that was constructed around an intellectual idea of citizenship, rather than citizenship by circumstances of birth.

"I think there's more to it than that."

Agreed.

Because Cousin Dave I'm saying it's ridiculous to think people were better people back then.

There is this notion they really picked themselves up by their bootstraps but then they had things like indentured servants, slaves, and second class citizens.

Perhaps we financially take care of people now but we did it in other ways back then. There is nothing new under the sun just packaged differently.

And I'm sick of the argument that if we stop giving people money they'll stop having children they can't take care of. They just don't stop. Even if the kids starve they don't stop.

I believe there is a reason we have welfare and people attack the poor because the poor keep making bad personal choices. And deep down we want some kind of compensation for it, because we do the right thing even when it's unpleasant. And they keep doing the wrong thing and causing pain to their kids-deep scaring pain. And it costs money. And crime-lots of crime. But it's not welfare causing it, and it's not because they don't just pick themselves up by their bootstraps.

Welfare is just a bandage for a deeper problem. I've lived in places without welfare and trust me-people don't just stop.

"Japan at the age of 1 and spend the rest of your life there, but you'll always be gajin."

You can be an ethnic Japanese person , who came from Brazil because the Japanese government doesn't want non-Japanese Immigrants, so an ethnic Japanese (but culturally Brazilian) should be fine right ?

Be prepared to be treated like a giant turd.

People don't realize how fucking good American society is.

"And I'm sick of the argument that if we stop giving people money they'll stop having children they can't take care of. They just don't stop. Even if the kids starve they don't stop."

No, I'm perfectly aware of that. On the other hand, giving people money doesn't make them stop either. Here's the scary bit: Why didn't the human population mushroom centuries ago? If you just do a straight geometric progression from the dawn of Homo sapiens, we should be well over hundreds of billions of people by now (I'll have to do the math tonight, but that sounds about right). The reason it didn't happen is because, up until about a century ago, most of the people who were ever born didn't live long enough to reproduce very much. That's now changed in the West. Anyone who wants to have 15 kids can do so, and odds are they will all make it to adulthood.

"I believe there is a reason we have welfare and people attack the poor because the poor keep making bad personal choices. And deep down we want some kind of compensation for it, because we do the right thing even when it's unpleasant. "

That's a pretty good summary of what we're running into today. People feel that there is no reward, either earthly or spiritually (if you will), for moral behavior. Bad boys get all the women, etc.

"And they keep doing the wrong thing and causing pain to their kids-deep scaring pain. And it costs money. And crime-lots of crime. But it's not welfare causing it, and it's not because they don't just pick themselves up by their bootstraps."

Maybe not, but here's the thing we keep tripping over: We can't afford it any more. The people who keep doing the wrong thing are demanding more, far more, than the people who are doing the right thing can ever hope to provide. About 85% of our federal budget is going into transfer payments. It's reaching the point where we are about to have to cut the U.S. Army to pre-WWII levels in order to fund welfare. If you look back at how unprepared we were to fight at the start of WWII, that ought to scare somebody. We were damn lucky that Japan didn't attack us in 1938 instead of waiting until late 1941. (And that they screwed up strategically). In a lot of parts of the country we no longer have an effective system of law. If you don't have that, then it doesn't matter how many people are or aren't on welfare, because you won't have an economic system capable of sustaining it anyway.

I'm very pessimistic about the future of the West right now. When I was a teenager, I dreamed about the day when humans would be expanding out into the universe, finding new worlds and new places for different societies to evolve and flourish. Now I'm just hoping that I don't live long enough to have to witness the coming of the next Dark Age.

I s'pose this is a hair off topic lenona, and I don't know if you live in the US or not, but "to reproduce far less"?
Really? We are already below replacement, and only close because of immigration.
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Yes, I live in the U.S., and last I heard, neither the national OR global population is falling, per se. If we really want to make the U.S. more crowded (and I suspect even conservatives would prefer another solution, even without immigrants being involved) maybe we should make it a lot easier for people to immigrate here legally?? Last I heard, plenty of people are still trying to come here ILLEGALLY...
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As for the teen birthrate... dropping:
________________________________

I'm very glad it is, but there's still no shortage of people, married or not, who are still having babies for all the wrong reasons. Not good for the kids and those who have to live near them or work with them - such as teachers.
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Finally, the world population clock people have a growth rate that is in stark decline, per the UN: The latest United Nations projections indicate that world population will nearly stabilize at just above 10 billion persons after 2062.
_____________________________________

I keep hearing that, but suspiciously, no one ever explains WHY it would stabilize at ANY level, when it's taking less and less time to add each billion to the global population. (Roughly: 1927 - two billion - 1959, 1974, 1987, 1999, 2011 - seven billion...you get the picture.)
__________________________________

The key issue for most independent countries, is that THEIR OWN population starts to fall, then who supports the elderly, when there are less kids, and who pays taxes?

___________________________

If childfree people can save money despite being heavily taxed, work until 70 or more, work to keep healthy, etc, maybe the rest of the world can too? Yes, it will be very hard to make the changes, but we do what we have to.

I would add that you didn't say anything about the teen birth rate dropping in Third World countries. Whether the girls are married or not, any doctor will tell you that teen pregnancy, even in the U.S., is just plain DANGEROUS, both for the mother and the baby! (For starters, the baby is more likely to have a low birth weight and thus faces a greater chance of SIDS.)

If people didn't realize this in past centuries, maybe it's because adult mothers and their babies so often died at childbirth anyway, so the risk was taken for granted regardless of the mother's age. Clearly, we cannot afford to keep pretending it's harmless for girls under 20 or so to get pregnant - regardless of their culture.

Oh yes, forgot to say - there's an article by Cathy Young that appeared in Salon in 2000: "The anti-child revolt: You people make me sick."

http://www.salon.com/2000/08/02/anti_child_2/

(CY is childfree herself, from what I can tell - that is, not having kids doesn't seem to be something she regrets.)

She had plenty of valid criticisms about the childfree's lunatic fringe. However, she did not have the brains to avoid the Chicken Little argument so often made by pro-natalists:

"....But there’s nothing wrong with some societal recognition of the sacrifices parents make, or some societal effort to make things easier for those who have undertaken this difficult job.

"Nonsense, scoff the 'child-free' militants: These people made the choice to have children; why is that anyone else’s problem? Why, they cry, should I give up anything just because you decided to reproduce?

"Try this: Because if no one made the choice to reproduce, none of us would have a future."

I mean, there's a big difference between demanding that we ALL stop reproducing right now (no adult I've ever heard of would try to make that argument with a straight face in a serious forum) and simply demanding, for serious reasons, that parents curb their parental appetites, which can be endless.

Got kicked off. Just wanted to add that:

The U.S. economy is based heavily on convincing people to buy things they don't need, which is also why we're one of the world's biggest polluters. Whereas before the 20th century, thrift was the way both the U.S. and the rest of the world's nations tended to run their economies. Who's to say we couldn't do that again, if we HAD to?

And last I heard, there's no shortage of people over 60 being forced to retire; if we have a "shortage" of young workers at some point, who's to say the older people with jobs won't be happy to KEEP their jobs as long as they can do them properly?

Also, I wanted to add some of the more fun reader comments from the Salon article (the link above, it turns out, will show you only the comments - you have to click on "Read Cathy Young's story" in red to read her article):

"Dear Ms. Young, what actually made you sick was swallowing that heaping helping of outdated pro-child propaganda. Kids are our future? Right now that future is freeways-turned-parking-lots and no affordable housing. And who relies on Social Security existing at all in 30 years? I sure don’t. Labor shortages? Puh-leeze. I’ll just be getting my Egg McMuffin from a vending machine.

"Our society has romanticized parenthood and made children into household gods. Deciding NOT to have children requires tremendous effort and constant explanation. The anti-child movement is providing support for those who don’t want ‘em , can’t stand ‘em and shouldn’t have ‘em. Yes, it’s a selfish movement, but it’s also pointing out that parents are at least as selfish — in their children’s names." – Kat Daley

"Cathy Young calls the child-free movement 'sheer narcissism.'

"No. Sheer narcissism is the belief that your genes are so valuable to the Pool that you can’t resist bringing more children onto an overcrowded planet.

"Reproduction is the ultimate expression of narcissism." – Yolanda D. Seabourne