> the TFR has gone south of 2 pretty much everywhere, with interesting exceptions (Iceland, Israel). That means that our lifestyle is incompatible with long term survival.
Only if the rate stays there permanently, which is unlikely. Over the span of a century or two, some population contraction might actually be good for overall survival.
Yeah, but a society of year 2221 is likely to look completely different from society of 2021. We do not yet know how.
It might be that Taliban-like theocracies inherit the Earth through their much higher fertility, or it might be that authoritarian countries start producing children in artificial wombs, or something completely different. But the current societal model where the old are more numerous than the young is likely to be unsustainable. It is not just raw numbers (population contraction); it is the structure of the population that is extra worrisome.
Rich societies (not just Western ones) seem unable to reproduce themselves - the TFR has gone south of 2 pretty much everywhere, with interesting exceptions (Iceland, Israel). That means that our lifestyle is incompatible with long term survival.
We also have a huge, huge health problem that might directly be caused by abundance of food. Metabolic diseases. Just count all the fat people you meet during a 10 minute walk downtown. Many of them are young and already on their way over the 300 pound mark.
I am not even starting a rant about how algorithms hijack our emotions and manipulate our behavior online.
Humans aren't necessarily built for the world we created. Yes, many things are obviously good: not dying of cholera at the age of 2, for example. But there definitely are things to denigrate in our daily life script. And we must acknowledge these downsides if we ever want to get rid of them.