Slow progress in writing. The childcare question.

20211208

I continue to plug away on the document that I mentioned starting in my blog of November 17. To recapitulate, am taking the depopulation agenda of the past century and the depopulation effect of Covid 19 as givens and looking at how to raise my family.

The first thing any author needs is a readership. I don't see widespread interest in creating families. A great many people know that I am here in Ukraine starting over. Nobody has expressed interest in emulating me.

The evidence goes the other way. When I put a blurb in the class notes section of the Reed College magazine, with a picture of Oksana and the three kids, I got absolutely no response. Not a single attaboy. Exactly what I expected. When I write to former acquaintances in Bethesda, including some of you, I get the same sort of response. It is of course a question of what I read into absolute silence, but I feel kind of an appalled disbelief as much as anything else.

This can sometimes be humorous. Since the advent of Covid Reed College has implemented alumni gatherings over Zoom. I attended the first one about three months ago, sitting quietly and listening to rather mundane discussions of dogs, recipes and so on. I had just been invited to introduce myself and was talking about travels, languages,  reading I had done and other such adult topics, when Eddie and Zoriana showed up and threw their arms around me. I wish I had a screenshot of the reaction on those faces!  A couple rather lamely explained that they didn't personally feel any obligation to have children.  Ahem Ahem.  I am sure that much more than that was going through their minds.

Anyhow that's where it is. As far as my peers go, I am totally alone on a quixotic quest. Thank goodness we have some Ukrainian friends of Oksana's generation who are also raising families.

Which circles back to the question, why have children? That's the topic of the piece of writing I am including below, which might take the form of a chapter at some point in time.  I would appreciate your feedback on form, content, tone and whatever.

On the home front, yesterday night Oksana expressed concern about Zoriana's hearing. I had done my own simple vision tests, looking down the road from the bus stop to see if they could make things out more clearly than I could – they can – and making sure that they can read clearly. Oksana thought that in addition to not wanting to hear what parents say, which afflicts all four-year-olds, Zoriana might have real problems hearing.

Through an online hearing test we discovered that her hearing was no better than my own. That's not good enough for a four-year-old. Oksana immediately took her to the doctor who diagnosed congestion in her sinus and adenoids. We will check progress after she has worked her way through a bag full of medicines.

Oksana and I, just like every mother and father in the world, have different opinions about the children's health. My opinion is that a child is sick if said child looks and acts sick. The opposite opinion is that if the thermometer shows anything over 38°C (100°F), that kid is de facto sick, even if bouncing off the walls and doing handsprings in between. The latter opinion has generally had the upper hand, as result of which Zoriana has been at home about one third of the time this fall.

The day care center lowered the boom. Fish or cut bait. In or out. Either we are going to pay a monthly rate for child care, and she goes every day, where she stays home. I will let you know how that turns out.

As for myself, I have been pretty healthy all year. Last week I got a bit of a sore throat and nipped the expected strep in the bud by taking doxycycline immediately. I only missed three days on the exercise bike. However, after three days back my throat is a little bit strained again. This time I think I'll take a bit more time off.

Brief news on the Covid 19 front. As you may have read, Pfizer wanted to bury the outcome of their clinical trials for 55 years (!!!) and some brave judge did not let them.  When you read it you understand why.  In other news the courts in the United States continue to overturn vaccine mandates. No, is not those Democrat nominees, but Republicans supporting "My body, my choice." Europe is split. Scandinavia is pretty much giving up on mandating anything, whereas Germany and Austria seem ready to force the jabs on everybody.  Our salvation here will be in inertia and ineptitude. Probably the best defense anywhere.

That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the men are strong, though the women's opinions are sometimes stronger; the women good-looking and charming whether or not they always make sense, and while the children may be above average but they're not above coming down with a bug or two.

I know full well many of you are not going to agree with me that there is an anti-fertility agenda, that Covid might be part of it, that the world needs any more people like us, or that I should have any role in producing such. You might also be able to suggest topics to include, exclude or clarify. Please do so – my childhood as a conservative in Berkeley and Reed College gave me a pretty thick skin.

1.      The severe decline in desire to have children

John B. Calhoun's mouse experiments, especially one named Universe 25, made him famous in the 1970s. He gave colonies of mice what would seem to be ideal living conditions: multistory condominiums in air-conditioned surroundings with plenty of food, water and nesting materials. Absent the need to fight for survival or for mates, the mice bred rapidly.

However, without privacy, and without mouse-meaning in their lives they simply stop being mice. Their bizarre behavior included hyper aggression, homosexuality, total retreat from social interaction, and lack of interest in sex and abandonment of litters. The colonies died out totally.

The human population has experienced similar social changes over the last century.  Our material wants are satisfied, whether by our own work or by welfare. We are increasingly warehoused in large condominium structures surrounded by so many other people that we paradoxically know, and desire to know, very few.  Probably not coincidentally, we observe fertility rates below replacement level in every developed country. Over the past three years the Covid 19 pandemic has exacerbated an already alarming trend.  The number of US adults who say they are unlikely to have children has jumped by a quarter, up seven percentage points to 44%. 

On top of this, there has been a relentless drumbeat on the need to control human population. Most people accept the proposition that there are too many people on earth. The Covid 19 situation fits in very well with an ongoing agenda to curb our numbers.

That would imply that the couples who do want to have children would need to be wanting four just to maintain our numbers. That obviously won't happen –even in better times fewer than one couple in five expressed a desire to have three or more children.

The Covid 19 situation puts this in sharper focus. The majority of educated people throughout the world simply accept what they read and hear from government spokespeople, the media and academics with regard to the dangers posed by the virus and the necessity, safety and efficacy of the injections. Though they all value their health, they are not sufficiently concerned to investigate when they hear skeptics question whether their lives are at risk. With regard to long-term reproductive health, most show little concern whatsoever.

2.      Purpose of Life

The question of whether or not to have children is related to the question of the purpose of life. The meaning of life has been seen in terms of the individual going back to the days of Aristotle. He talked about the life well led, the virtuous life. Today's Maslow triangle measures progressive individual self-realization.  Participation in society is seen through the light of its value to the individual, not the other way around.

Other peoples have put more emphasis on the society in which they live.  We are social animals. Evidence of this is clear when we look at people who have grown up without human companionship, such as Genie Wiley, the wild girl of Los Angeles. Or for that matter monkeys in the zoo raised without the companionship of other monkeys.

Society is a superorganism.  Individuals absorb traits and beliefs from the society around them.  We fancy the illusion of free choice, but as Kahneman, Tversky, Ariely, Trivers and others have shown, our behavior reflects the thinking of those around us a whole lot more than our own independent, individual conclusions.  We are social animals.  Unless we support the society in which we live, it will not support us.  And most significantly, it will not support our children well enough to sustain itself.

The American Indians saw themselves as custodians for one generation of tribal traditions that had existed since time immemorial and would continue in perpetuity. The Japanese, Chinese and Koreans see it the same sort of way. Or perhaps, used to see it that way.  They venerated their ancestors.  Their commitment to marriage and family was to fulfill their obligation to the parental generation.

This was somewhat the case in Western societies throughout the era of Christianity. There was a sense of our Biblical mission to be fruitful and multiply. Edmund Burke stated that society is a contract among our ancestors, the living, and those yet unborn. We owe it to our ancestors to pass on the benefits we have received, intact and undiminished, to future generations.

Religious belief has become increasingly less widespread since the Enlightenment.  Now even the few who go to church do not believe in having children. The former pastor of the Episcopal Church that I attended in Washington D.C. is a strong supporter of Planned Parenthood and LGBTXYZ.  These church people are probably the most ardent secularists in the world.  Church attendance is plummeting, along with the fertility of both the remaining adherents, most of whom no longer accept the core tenets, and those who have given it up.

Society is a superorganism, and morality is the force that keeps its elements in alignment.  To paraphrase Edmund Burke again, law alone can never be enough to align our interests sufficiently to run a society. We need the unseen hand of a common morality – a set of expectations for our own behavior and that of others. Without morality society is like a body with hormones out of whack.  Cancers grow unchecked. A glance at the headlines from major United States cities shows that that's exactly what is happening. A certain class of society feels no compunction about smash and grab robberies, or even killing random people on the street. The laws against this behavior, even when they are enforced, are monumentally slow, clumsy and expensive.

But we do not even see an attempt to enforce them. District attorneys, citing social justice principles, simply do not bring cases against the lower class. The titans of Wall Street mercilessly manipulate markets and fleece small shareholders, tenants and whoever else with no penalties whatsoever. There will not be any remedy in the law. Even if the will were present to pass and enforce such laws, we have lost the common sense of morality that would lead people to adhere to them out of habit rather than fear. And fear of the law is not, and never has been, adequate to see it enforced. Japanese, Koreans, Swiss and Germans are defined not by their laws but by their innate respect for the mores of society.

3.      Our Gene Pools were always Local

Who makes up one's community? The Indians knew exactly. They knew equally well who their enemies were - other Indian tribes who to outsiders like us would seem identical to them. The genetic and social commonalities among Indians who would support one another – that is to say the tribe – were evident and strong.

The most heart rending book on my bookshelf is one that my mother, Janet Seibert, edited for Theodora Kroeber, wife of A.L. Kroeber who founded the Berkeley anthropology department. It is entitled "Ishi, The Last of His Tribe."

This last of the Yahi Indians was found unconscious on a ranch near a railroad track in Northern California in 1911. The Kroebers gave him a home in Berkeley and learned his language and history.  However, Ishi remained a very lonely individual and didn't last too long. He offers a tragic example of the fact that people need to belong to a society of like people.

Harvard scholar Robert Putnam makes the same point in his classic "Bowling Alone." Homogeneous neighborhoods have a high level of social capital. Highly diverse neighborhoods do not. The inhabitants not only fear the other, but fear one another more than people in more traditional settings.

4.      Kinship to Humanity is Kinship to Nobody

Again, who is our society? The globalists have told us that it consists of all people around us. Whatever their color, background or beliefs. In adopting everybody as our brothers we adopt nobody. We are equally close to everybody, and thus equally far from everybody. We have no feeling of kinship for those who surround us.

Kinship has been essential throughout human history. Kinship – tribe – defines who you are going to work together with in hard times. Who is going to support you when you encounter enemies, and among whom will your children find mates?

Gene pools for all species, until recently man as well, have been a local phenomenon, confined by geography to families, clans and tribes. The gene pool of all humanity is simply too massive for evolution to work with. When we mate outside of our gene pool, we are casting our seed to the winds.

Distinct gene pools evolve within every species.  They are the finest gradation of the ongoing process of evolution. Mutations appear spontaneously among individuals within a gene pool.  Natural selection operates on these mutations, eliminating most as deleterious but favoring a few via selection of the fittest.

"Fittest" means most fit for the social and physical environment in which the individuals find themselves.  Inuit people are suited to life in the Arctic, with a fair amount of fat and thick eyelids. We Indo-Europeans evolved in an environment that threw us in contact with a great many tribes of unlike people. Over the course of millennia we learned to cooperate in trade, adopt good ideas from neighboring groups, and to compete in both trade and warfare.

Richard Dawkins wrote in his 1976 "The Selfish Gene" that we organisms – phenotypes – exist only as the genes' mechanism for reproducing themselves. We die, but the beneficial genes within our makeup become immortal when they offer enough advantage to spread throughout the gene pool.  Most elements of our genome are millions of years old.

Though most beneficial mutations arise locally, some are imported.  We of European extraction have a Neanderthal admixture estimated to be up to 2%.  X chromosome evidence is that our Homo sapiens ancestors found something attractive about the Neanderthal ladies, and through the process called introgression the hybrid offspring inherited some beneficial traits that carry on today.

Generally, however, evolutionary biologists consider the optimal degree of relatedness for a mating pair to be something on the order of third or fourth cousins. They need to be of the same gene pool, but not so closely related that deleterious recessive genes so frequently pair up that it leads to inbreeding depression.

When the whole world is our society, marriages become haphazard. Unions of unlike people are inclined to be fraught with misunderstanding. When children arise from these matings, they do not inherit a culture, a sense of who they are in the same way as children who come from parents of the same background. 

5.      On Genetic Interests

Once we set aside the notion that all human beings are identical, it's easy to observe that people have evolved to suit their environments. We of European extraction learned how to work cooperatively in large groups, whether it be hunting mammoths or running large corporations. We developed the tolerance to sit at desks and push papers all day and the ability to plan for the future and grapple with abstract concepts such as money. The fact that other groups are not equally endowed with these talents is not a matter of blame, but evolution.  Each acquired its own strengths, useful in its own environment of evolutionary adaptatedness, but not necessarily in a modern industrial society.

The question of having kids is one of perpetuating not only a bloodline but also a culture.  A key question is whether or not you are interested in your culture. We have been indoctrinated not to be conscious of it, and even to reject it. Such a conclusion makes it easy to conclude as well that there is no point in having kids.  They would not be special, no more than additional protoplasm entering the seething mass of humanity, the boundless ocean of the human gene pool, contributing nothing.

A paradox that Frank Salter explains in his book "On Genetic Interests" (see my video review here on Amazon) is that the children of mixed marriages can be significantly more distant in a genetic sense from either parent than from unrelated neighbors of the local ethnicity.

We tend to support people who are like us, and lack of commonality is more pronounced than the globalists would have us believe. Developing the virtue of tolerance was one of the great accomplishments of our Indo-European ancestors over the past few millennia of widespread world trade. Tolerance is exactly that – acceptance of diversity, recognition of the fact that people are different. Applying a diversity mantra to deny the differences is no virtue at all.

We feel a kinship with those who are genetically related. I experienced this when I lived in Germany 50 years ago. The Internet informed me later that I had lived within 50 miles of the place from which many of my ancestors had emigrated close to three centuries ago. I felt a bone-deep oneness with these people, something much deeper than mere verbal communication.  The attitudes that drove my former wife to call them Nazis three days into a German vacation in 1991 were things I intuitively understood and generally appreciated. Not coincidentally, they echoed friction points within our marriage.

On another note, through marriages to a Vietnamese and the above-mentioned half Japanese wife I learned that there are differences in worldview that cannot be articulated. One was in the sense of responsibility to the community. I have a deep, inborn sense of obligation to my community. These two women simply did not share it. On the other hand, they felt deeper obligations to blood relations than I did. 

Another difference that I noted was in sense of humor. We Europeans use humor as a device to smooth over differences of opinion. Other mechanisms such as a tighter conformity, work in Asian societies. Neither of my Asian wives had much of a sense of humor. Instead, they had a strong sense of duty compelling them to do things "the right way," but could not laugh about it if I didn't agree as to what that might be.  The Japanese sense of when a child needs to go to a pediatrician, eat vitamins or put on a winter coat owes more to a woman's mother's instruction than to any scientific revelations. I considered these misunderstandings to be both cultural and genetic.

Anecdotally, as a private school trustee I observed many Jewish families that had adopted Latin American, East Asian, black, and ordinary gentile children. There were major differences between parents and children in temperament, drive, intellectual accomplishments, and personalities. The kids were simply not Jewish. The same can be said for Oriental children adopted into white families. They do well in school, but their personalities usually owe more to their birth parents than parents.

A homogeneous environment is simply more likely to be a comfortable place to raise a family. The children will face fewer challenges in figuring out how to get along with their playmates. They will be more likely to think favorably of parenthood and entertain fantasies of who they might marry… the kind of fantasies that in more normal times would more often lead to actual families and children. If you want to have children and grandchildren like yourself, or if you simply want to have them at all, your best bet is to choose a spouse from your own community. More than that, the spouse who has a commitment to the community.

An advantage of belonging to a tribe is that you have like-minded people to defend your interests, as you defend theirs. We observe tribalism among just about all of the immigrant groups in the United States. In fact, among immigrant groups throughout the world. People stick together to defend their own interests. The Jews and the Chinese have a long-standing tradition of doing this.

In the past there have been negative motivations to having children as well is positive. These have included:

• The desire not to be shunned as a barren woman, or men as "bare twigs."

• The desire not to be alone in old age, and

• The desire to have someone to support you in old age

The material progress of the past century, and the abandonment of religion, have mitigated these negatives. The latter two, the desire not to be alone in old age and the need to have somebody support us, are likely to return with the impending financial collapse. There are simply not enough people in the cohorts of future taxpayers to support the levels of generosity built into retirement plans such as Social Security and health plans such as Medicare. Senior living, places to park old parents as they way to die, is already beyond the means of most families. It should be evident that the traditional wisdom of having children to care for you in your old age was not whatsoever misplaced. It took a holiday as the electorate learned they could vote current benefits to be paid for by future children. Absent those children, it will return with a vengeance.

6.      Support of one's own ethny

Americans of European extraction do not support their own. Nor, for the most part, do their cousins back home. This is a historical oddity.  It has meant that they do not strongly defend their interests in the public square: public schools, police, courts and so on.  

This assumption may have been out of a sense of fair play, or a sense that they held an unassailably strong position. It has been to their detriment. A half-century back the ethnic neighborhoods in Philadelphia – the Polish and the Irish, Ukrainians here and there, used to be fairly solid and self-supporting.  They used to marry one another and raise families. Those neighborhoods have been systematically dismantled. The Irish in South Boston were broken up. Chinatowns disappeared in major cities And with that these peoples have lost the inclination to perpetuate themselves.. The moral of the story is we should reestablish such places to raise the odds of raising normal children. Given that the political climate in the United States and much of Western Europe makes such neighborhood renaissance unlikely, we should investigate alternatives.

7.      Conclusion

I have to assume that some element of our society will manage to perpetuate itself both in body and spirit over the coming couple of generations. Exactly how may not be clear, but I must make the assumption in order to give meaning to my life. To make the investment in raising children, I have to assume that there will be a society in which they can play a meaningful part. I have to assume that the culture will absorb and support their own children.

This is similar to the faith the Christians have had down through the centuries. They have faced annihilation at the hands of the Huns, the Mongols, Islam, the Black death and many other threats. It was never clear how they would survive, but they did. We must assume that this is no different. We have to keep the faith – in religion for believers, and in children and society for all of us – and do the best we can to prepare our kids for whatever is coming.