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Demographics News

CecilW

CecilW

Member
Real Person
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A few years ago, at a BF rtreat, someone showed an alarming YouTube video on demographics, and the fact that a nation/culture must have a minimum of something like 2.1 births per couple / woman to sustain it's population, much less thrive. Ought to be more.

It also sounded a big alarm about how Europe was already doomed to become a Muslim continent as the existing European cultures' birthrates had fallen too low, and how America was not far behind. It trumpeted that the main group which was still growing like wildfire was the muslims.

Very worrisome video. And, of course, we dicussed how PM might well make for bigger families and provide a good solution ...

Today, I ran across some interesting news on this subject. In the new book How Civilizations Die, by David Goldman, we are told that the birth rate in Muslim countries has also imploded within the last few years to catastrophic levels. That government officials call on Islamic women to marry earlier and have more children, and the women's response is that the sale of contraceptives goes up!!!

Dunno what will happen, and it seems like a good and Biblically sound idea to go for larger families ourselves. But it sure is interesting.

Btw, quite a number of pages can be read at the book's site on Amazon. Very interesting stuff, as well as the reasons why people seem to be refusing to reproduce.
 
Forgive my ignorance, but... what does the lack of procreation in non-Muslims have to do with the Muslim population "exploding?"
 
It's called "Muslim Demographics". Click below to view it. It offers a general overview of some of the issues concerning population growth or shrinkage and it's effects over the next few years to Christendom, specifically.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU

(On an interesting side note, the left leaning, "fact checking company" Snopes.com lists the claims in the video as "Mostly False", but does not offer anything solid to refute it. Instead, they cite a lack of corroborating data.)

There is also a more expansive piece called "Demographic Winter- The Decline of the Human Family". You can view the trailer here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG2IZEzUmA0

Or watch the full length movie here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZeyYIsGdAA

These are all very thought provoking films. Another film which provokes as much, if not more so, is "The Kinsey Syndrome". It's on a different subject, but what an impact! I highly recommend it. It is available to watch online but cut into 17 segments. The first one is here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAvF23WvoUc
 
There are two issues here. One is low fertility among non Muslims, the other is the political implications. I will deal with the second.

France has the largest potential problem with a Muslim minority in Europe. About 10% of the French are Muslim immigrants from the old French empire. The most intelligent will absorb French education and become much closer to the French upper middle class and upper class than they will be to their own culture. I call this the Nehru effect, after Nehru the first prime minister of an independent India. Nehru was Indian, but educated at Harrow school and Cambridge University, and became so like other upper class Englishmen that he sardonically described himself as the last Englishman to rule India.

As a last resort, France could institute a two class population, with Muslim immigrants being second class. I imagine there are contingency proposals for such a drastic measure sitting in bottom drawers in the French bureaucracy, but I do not expect such measures will be necessary. The French government will want Muslim immigrants to ‘defect’ to mainstream French culture, and I expect this will be working in most cases. The Nehru effect. The defection of the most intelligent Muslims in France to French culture will strip the Muslim subculture in France of effective leaders.

If I were a French government official, I would also like to see comparative religion taught in French schools. I have read the Koran, and Islam looks bad compared to other major religions. Buddhism blows Islam out of the water. I can see intelligent young Muslims drifting away from Islam, but staying nominally Islam because that is part of their background.

The late Shah of Iran was Muslim but despised Muslim clerics, referring to them as ‘towelheads’, even in the presence of foreign ambassadors. European culture is the most advanced in the world (America and Australia being branch offices) and absorbs intelligent young people from all over the world.
 
... and the point of my post, Froggie, is that despite the concerns raised by these movies about the exploding Islamic Demographics and the imploding Christian, due to low procreation rates, this new book provides evidence that Islam has suddenly and very rapidly followed suite. Most places, their procreation rates have fallen dramatically from 7-8 kids per family a generation ago to 1-7 now, with average rates in the 1.5-1.7 range, less than the theoretically needed 2.1.

In other words, Islam as a culture, and as nations, are in trouble, too. Maybe worse.
 
Am I the only person who bothered reading the synopsis to the book Cecil is reviewing?

Also, as one of the few unmarried women on here on a regular basis, I can honestly say that I feel part of the birthrate has to do with many men especially being in a state of suspended adolescence who think children would cramp their style.....if you even KNEW how many middle class, educated men state that they 'don't want children' (but want marriage/commitment) you would be shocked! Don't blame it all on women (or the old chestnut about women's lack of virtue, I know a lot more together women in their 20s and 30s than men, I can tell you!!!!)

B
 
Agreeing with Bels.
 
I have watched the videos on Youtube suggested in this topic, and the reasoning in the videos is simple minded. I don’t dispute the facts, but it is essential to understand exponential mathematics and population biology to understand these matters. I expect most readers will have this knowledge.

In the wild, populations rise and fall all the time for many reasons, the populations of field mice and rabbits being good examples. People in Somalia breed up in good times, then the rains fail, and the population falls, mainly the old and very young. Biologists know this as ‘tracking the environment’. Very distressing images on television, and not intelligent behaviour, of course.

Replacement level for a human society with modern medicine is about 2.1 children per couple. If the births fall to 1.05, then the population will approximately halve in a generation, say 30 years, and then halve again in the next generation, This is exponential decay, and the population will take centuries before you could say it had died out.

If a country has 100 million people and no immigration, then a birth rate of 1.05 per couple will see 50 million in 30 years, 25 million in 60 years and 12.5 million in 90 years. Then people change their minds, go to 4.2 children per family, and the process goes into reverse. 25 million in 30 years, 50 million in 60 years, and 100 million in 90 years.

Economic effects could be serious, but if the population of 50 million only want half the number of shirts as do 100 million, it is only necessary to make half the number of shirts. Not rocket science. Today, it is possible in principle to have widespread automation, and as scientists realised by about 1960, the main obstacle is human intelligence, not technical limits. Moving up to an automated economy is an intelligence test, set by Mother Nature, which most people will fail, as has become obvious in more recent years.

The Muslim subculture is a worry, but I rely on the Nehru effect as described in my previous post.

HG Wells, John Keynes and others cracked the solution to a prosperous world future by 1930. A small, stable world population, lots of machinery. Can we pass Mother Nature’s intelligence test?

John Keynes, The Economic Prospects for our Grandchildren. 1930. Essay. Google it.
HG Wells, Men Like Gods, 1921. Novel.
 
Isabella said:
Am I the only person who bothered reading the synopsis to the book Cecil is reviewing?

Also, as one of the few unmarried women on here on a regular basis, I can honestly say that I feel part of the birthrate has to do with many men especially being in a state of suspended adolescence who think children would cramp their style.....if you even KNEW how many middle class, educated men state that they 'don't want children' (but want marriage/commitment) you would be shocked! Don't blame it all on women (or the old chestnut about women's lack of virtue, I know a lot more together women in their 20s and 30s than men, I can tell you!!!!)

B
Click to expand...

Nope... Right here with ya .... Preach it Bels, Preach it!!!!!!
 
if you even KNEW how many middle class, educated men state that they 'don't want children' (but want marriage/commitment) you would be shocked!
Click to expand...
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmpppppppppppppphhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhffffffffffffffffffffff

(don't worry folks, i have him stifled!
Sir G. Bumblberry)
 
Yeah, I hear the 'don't want kids' from most of the men I work with, usually followed by a shuddering shoulder thing..
 
porkchop said:
Yeah, I hear the 'don't want kids' from most of the men I work with, usually followed by a shuddering shoulder thing..
Click to expand...
Perhaps they are remembering just what little *beeps* THEY were as children. *sigh*
 
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