Links to Consider, 10/17/2024

Warren Ferrell on handling conflict; Nicholas Eberstadt on depopulation; Dan Willliams on post-truth; Rob Henderson on social class in America

In an interview with Hannah Gal, Dr. Warren Ferrell says,

Historically speaking, when we heard criticism, we feared a potential enemy and naturally built defences to fend off the danger.

…Since it is easier to hear criticism after we’ve been appreciated, I would have the first person start by sharing appreciations of the other person. … Such positive remarks send the message to the other person that you are not hostile and that you are listening.

…It would help greatly if, when listening to people with a different ideology or political stand, we didn’t think of our response but heard them out first.

Not likely to see that happen on Twitter.

Nicholas Eberstadt writes,

what is happening might be better explained by the field of mimetic theory, which recognizes that imitation can drive decisions, stressing the role of volition and social learning in human arrangements. Many women (and men) may be less keen to have children because so many others are having fewer children.

Unlike other proposed causes for the decline in fertility, this one is not self-reversing.

…By 2040—except, once again, in sub-Saharan Africa—the number of people under the age of 50 will decline. By 2050, there will be hundreds of millions fewer people under the age of 60 outside sub-Saharan Africa than there are today—some 13 percent fewer, according to several UNPD projections. At the same time, the number of people who are 65 or older will be exploding

…Current projections have suggested that South Korea will mark three deaths for every birth by 2050. In some UNPD projections, the median age in South Korea will approach 60. More than 40 percent of the country’s population will be senior citizens; more than one in six South Koreans will be over the age of 80. South Korea will have just a fifth as many babies in 2050 as it did in 1961. It will have barely 1.2 working-age people for every senior citizen.

Should South Korea’s current fertility trends persist, the country’s population will continue to decline by over three percent per year—crashing by 95 percent over the course of a century. What is on track to happen in South Korea offers a foretaste of what lies in store for the rest of the world.

Dan Williams writes,

For politicians, pundits, and parties to get away with—and often benefit from—asserting falsehoods like those, society must undoubtedly have deep epistemological problems. And the fact that these problems are not wholly novel does not make them any less concerning.

Nevertheless, such problems do not emerge from a conflict in broader society between those who value truth and those who do not. They emerge from sharp disagreements over what the truth about various matters is and, at a more fundamental level, over which people and institutions are trustworthy sources of truth.

Rob Henderson writes,

Elites tend to marry one another. They stay married. And raise their children within these marriages in order to secure dynastic continuity. Educated parents, particularly mothers, are better equipped to prepare their children for success. Divorce, which is both financially burdensome and a distraction from demanding careers and child-rearing, is less common among the wealthy. Additionally, children born outside of marriage introduce further complications and are therefore exceedingly rare in these circles. And, of course, the attributes that predict professional success are the same attributes that predict long-term romantic stability and marital commitment (intelligence, conscientiousness, impulse control, and so on). For people who lack such attributes, strong social norms and regular reminders from their society’s elites help them to combat their natural inclination to live for the moment and to instead behave in more prosocial ways.

His claim is that upper classes have always behaved conscientiously, with some exceptions. Pre-1960s, they also encouraged such behavior among middle and lower classes. Post-1960s, the upper classes encouraged the reckless behavior, even though they continued themselves to behave conscientiously. The lower classes listened to the new advice, with bad consequences.

In 1970, both upper-middle-class and working-class married couples were equally likely to report being "very happy" in their marriages. Today, though, the share of "very happy" working-class marriages has declined by a third, while the rate among upper-middle-class couples has remained stable.

And maybe that statistic is related to this one:

In dual-income households within the top socioeconomic quintile, only 29 percent of wives earn more than their husbands, whereas in the bottom quintile, an incredible 69 percent of wives out-earn their husbands.

This makes me wonder if the main causal factor here is the fundamental realignment of labor demand away from working with things and instead toward working with people or working with symbols.

substacks referenced above: @

The Hypocrisy of the New Upper Class

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For the love of God, stop talking about "post-truth"

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From Civil War to Civil Dialogue