This only makes sense if quantity of population matters more than quality.

No, it doesn't. That's exactly the problem. It seems the more "quality", whatever that means, the less people reproduce, thus society falls apart.

> Given how difficult it seems for any genuinely universal cultural movement to take off in the dating space

?????

Dating culture is substantially different than a decade ago.

I meant to take off deliberately with the aim of correcting the problem mentioned in the article. Western society seems too self-absorbed to me to ever move past selfish motives at this point.

In other words, some kind of cultural movement that tells people to put their preferences aside “for the good of society” seems like it won’t work anytime soon.

Oh okay I don't see that happening any sooner than the heat death of the universe.

Indeed, it, has become substantially worse, even though that seemed almost impossible.

*Worse for the average person, better for the elite. Just another symptom of growing inequality.

As I said in another post, better to be the 10th wife of a prince rather than the 1st wife of a commoner (in a highly unequal society).

I'm starting to view the relationship between the religious part of our society and the secular as being symbiotic in a sense.

What makes people defect from religious communities on the border to secular centers? Some combination of money, freedom, and power (to participate in shaping the wider society at scale). The cost of that defection is an uprooting and disconnection from "traditional values". I'm not as certain about this part, but part of it seems to be that it's easier to do the work of having and raising children on the border.

What makes people defect from the secular centers back to religious communities on the border? Just the opposite trade off -- less money, freedom, power. But you'll be more grounded and connected to a community, which can be immensely satisfying. And it's easier to raise kids.

Also I should note here that the borders and centers I'm talking about aren't necessarily physical -- in fact increasingly they are very much not, especially with the rise of remote work.

People in the secular center are doing a tremendous amount of very valuable and high leverage technical work to make a scaled civilization like ours function on a day-to-day basis. That's super important stuff.

People in religious (or cultural) communities at the border are doing a tremendous amount of cultural work to sustain a reserve of human values that can fuel those at the center when hard times come. Also super important stuff.

A balance in the tradeoffs between these places and a continuous cycling of people between them seems healthy to me.

I love this, but there's one thing I'd point out. With few exceptions, there's little defection from secular society into fundamentalist religious communities. Almost everyone in those communities was born there.

Reminds me of the period of people coming to America during colonial times. That there were stories and tales of people joining Native American tribes, completely leaving their old lives behind and becoming happier but you never heard accounts of the reverse. Native Americans willing joining the colonist, this rarely, if ever, happened.

I don't think is a good comparison. Native Americans couldn't join the colonists because the colonists were very racist against them, whereas apparently the Natives were more accepting of colonists who wanted to join them.

"...when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them."[0]

I don't think "Natives were less racist" is a convincing explanation for how badly white colonists wanted to return to living with them (even when, according to Franklin, the white society they had returned to was as kind as possible to convince them to stay). It may be a part of it, but doesn't explain why everyone who lived in Native culture was so disgusted with white culture after.

[0] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-01...

>I don't think "Natives were less racist" is a convincing explanation for...

No, it doesn't explain that part at all. It does explain why the Natives never tried joining and integrating into the white colonial society.

Honestly, I'm curious why white people who had been taken prisoner wanted to go back so badly, but sadly, I doubt anyone ever asked them and then accurately recorded their testimony for people to read 250 years later.

I'd argue the religious are actually causing cultural destruction and are a net loss in every way except raw childbearing output. Having been born into one and 'defected', I found the community insular, stuck on platitudes, little to no critical thinking, full of unspoken rules and expectations, and with a ever shrinking dating pool.

They produce poorly educated children, heartache, cognitive dissonance, and perpetuate destructive traditions in the name of long dead / imaginary people.

> What makes people defect from the secular centers back to religious communities on the border? Just the opposite trade off -- less money, freedom, power. But you'll be more grounded and connected to a community, which can be immensely satisfying. And it's easier to raise kids

I feel like this is a more recent trend than vice versa

Another thing that the "religious" parts provide is population, some of which will flow to urban centers. Which will probably be exacerbated in the US in coming decades because of growing cultural divide between different states

I would take a look at the ideological allies of the idea you have explained:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_genocide_conspiracy_theo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement

The author of your book is fascist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Kaufmann

> Kaufmann identifies as a national conservative.[13] He has called "woke" ideas "a battle for the foundations of our civilisation" and has expressed support for Florida governor Ron DeSantis, arguing at the 2022 British Conservative Party conference that the party should follow DeSantis's lead.[14] For Kaufmann, although some of his educational policies "go too far", "DeSantis is the future of conservatism".[15]

Luckily we as humans can choose to agree with certain aspects of an ideology while disagreeing with other aspects of it

Indeed, that's why it's important to know where ideologies come from, who is using them, and to what ends they are using them for so we can be reflective of the greater implications of our beliefs.

If you find your ideology in the mouths of authoritarians, fascists, or those with genocidal intent, it's probably worth reflecting on why.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/what-is-the-great-replaceme...

> WHAT ARE THE ORIGINS OF 'THE GREAT REPLACEMENT'?

> It is thought to have its roots in early 20th century French nationalism. It was popularized in recent years by French writer Renaud Camus who believes immigration from Africa and the Middle East will eventually lead to the extinction of the native white European race, according to non-profit organization ADL (Anti-Defamation League.) Because many white nationalists in the United States and abroad believe Jewish people are actively encouraging non-white immigration, the false narrative is considered anti-Semitic, the ADL said. White "replacement theory" and the idea of a "white genocide" were a pillar of Nazi Germany's ideology, which pointed to Jews as the single most dangerous threat to white civilization. The Nazis killed six million Jews in World War Two.

I think fundamentalism is too brittle to persist like that over the long term.

Yes, the most conservative religions usually have a lot of kids, but over the generations, many of those kids will leave the religion, or at least join a less fundamentalist strain and have fewer kids. Unless the culture is kept strictly separate (increasingly impossible), the quality of life that the surrounding secular culture offers is too alluring. So standards are relaxed, women get educated and start working, have fewer kids. And it ripples down the generations. It hasn't happened yet in some of the less developed parts of the world, but as they get richer, it will. It always does.

The growth of the ultra Orthodox in Israel is an interesting counter example to your point.

> I read a book awhile ago called Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, which basically argues that cultures which strongly promote traditional values, having children, etc. will evolutionarily out-compete groups that don’t.

That's happening in Israel, as the haredi out-breed the reform Jews and the seculars.[1] Religious societies that oppress women, breed lots of kids, and are dominated by old men in black with beards are a thing. That exists in Jewish, Islamic, and Christian forms, so it's independent of the brand of religion.

[1] https://www.jta.org/2021/03/10/israel/how-the-haredi-orthodo...

Those models can only exist as minority feeding on a majority. Without reform Jews and seculars, their country will be overrun by neighbors in a few hours.

Hinduist "four ugas" capture this idea very well: the golden age when strong and good create values, the silver age when weak and good uphold the values, the bronze age when weak with sloppy morals let the values decline, the iron age when strong and evil destroy the values.

I doubt that the current situation with marriage institute is seen as a problem by those in power. As we're progressing towards the iron age, the culture of indiscriminate hookups will prevail and will be celebrated by governments, the only motive of short connections will be greed and lust, and the kids, occasionally born from such encounters will be raised in the gov kindergartens. And people will worship AI that, among other things, will match pairs on the dating market.

Woah. The Ancient Greeks did the metal thing too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_Man

Maybe it was an even earlier Proto-Indo-European meme that radiated out to everyone.

Speaking of Greeks, they believed that such universal ideas come from the world of ideas, or the world of archetypes; great thinkers merely perceive this world, and that's why different cultures seemingly by accident end up with the same ideas in their "books of wisdom". In this worldview, the achievement of greek or indian philosophers isn't creating the idea of the four ages, but expressing it in the limited thoughts framework they had to deal with. It's a lot like how painters try to express what they see on a small flat rectangle of paper.

They were wrong; it's all from the Proto-Indo-Europeans.

Deveraux's blog makes a good argument that this meme is ahistorical: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...

Tldr: we glorify the men of harsh societies shaped by scarcity, but soft liberal societies actually outcompete them militarily and economically.

"Strong" in the golden age has nothing to do with physical strength. It's about moral strength, when one does the right thing even under grave pressure. The harsh strength comes into play in the iron age when might is the right.

This doesn't pass the eye test. If it's true that religious people will outbreed non-religious people, why is religiosity declining?

The simple answer is that religion is not hereditary. Children of religious parents do not necessarily follow their parents' beliefs.

My family is an example. Several children taught that evolution is fake, and none of us agree with our parents. Only one of us have any religious beliefs at all.

Religiosity isn’t declining (globally) and the book addresses the “defection” idea, noting that most people still have similar beliefs as their parents, and that birth rates still outcompete defections.

Every source I can find says that secularism/atheism is growing worldwide. Not sure what you're talking about.

Even if "most" people don't "defect", you have to make up the remainder by people going the other way, for which there doesn't seem to be any evidence.

The nonreligious are growing in raw numbers but decreasing in percentage terms.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/how-religious-will-th...

You don’t need to make up the remainder by going the other way, as I mentioned above: religious population growth comes from birth rates, not conversions.

You may have shed the religion, but what about the values?