You said "The low replacement birth rate has several dimensions. One of the reasons that there is so much economic pressure in Europe to bring in immigrants is that there is a shortage fo young workers, and that promises to get worse. Likewise, sustaining the enormous welfare states requires lots of young workers...who have to come from somewhere.

Yet large amounts of immigration is politically explosive, especially when assimilation is difficult.

It's a complicated matter, and my suspicion is that from the POV of post-Crisis Europe, the demographic issues will look huge, and they'll wonder how it all got so little attention in the 90s and early 00s.

China and Japan are heading for trouble, too, if things don't change."

Japan, which wants no part of immigration, is solving its shortage of young workers in the way Isaac Asimov first outlined 50 years ago. Their latest is an Eldercare robot. They also have Peoplewash machines which will give you a bath and shampoo. I'm not kidding! Forgot the link; I read this weeks ago.

Originally Posted by Odin

The problem with the "Eurabia" hypothesis is that it's based on linearist assumptions, the same kind of assumptions S&H reminded us to be wary of. I'm expecting Europe to shift towards the paleoconservative right during the regeneracy because of immigration and assimilation issues (won't that be odd, I'm expecting the US to shift left, thus reversing the current political sterotypes of Europe = center-left and the US = center-right).

Why would the U.S. shift left after the 4T? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd love that to happen, but what makes you say it will?

Originally Posted by 1990

Why would the U.S. shift left after the 4T? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd love that to happen, but what makes you say it will?

It seems faily likely to me that there will be a backlash against Neo-Liberalism towards economic populism as a result of the growing disgust with outsourcing and the like.

Originally Posted by Odin

It seems faily likely to me that there will be a backlash against Neo-Liberalism towards economic populism as a result of the growing disgust with outsourcing and the like.

Gotcha. In that case, watch John Edwards' campaign, as he's the only one out there right now talking economics.

BTW, I am still trying to keep the map-of-the-world project going, but am stumped in some areas. I asked for people's thoughts over in the Objections to GD thread, but nobody's replied yet. Sigh...

Originally Posted by 1990

BTW, I am still trying to keep the map-of-the-world project going, but am stumped in some areas. I asked for people's thoughts over in the Objections to GD thread, but nobody's replied yet. Sigh...

I've been horribly busy with my classes. Spring semester's barely started and I already have a big lab project for Microbiology class!

Originally Posted by Odin

I've been horribly busy with my classes. Spring semester's barely started and I already have a big lab project for Microbiology class!

Well...I have...SAT prep!

So...ha!

Originally Posted by 1990

Well...I have...SAT prep!

So...ha!

I gave you a response in the GD thread, if you didn't know.

And SAT prep courses are the biggest waste of money in the whole entire world (that I can think of).

Originally Posted by 1990

Well...I have...SAT prep!

So...ha!

Yikes! I hated the SAT.

Originally Posted by MichaelEaston

I gave you a response in the GD thread, if you didn't know.

And SAT prep courses are the biggest waste of money in the whole entire world (that I can think of).

Yeah, they're pretty expensive, but they're helpful. Every time I take a practice test I feel so awful afterwards, then I get my results and they're perfectly decent.

The real thing is in two weeks. Once that's over, I am never taking a test again. EVER.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

You said "The low replacement birth rate has several dimensions. One of the reasons that there is so much economic pressure in Europe to bring in immigrants is that there is a shortage fo young workers, and that promises to get worse. Likewise, sustaining the enormous welfare states requires lots of young workers...who have to come from somewhere.

Yet large amounts of immigration is politically explosive, especially when assimilation is difficult.

It's a complicated matter, and my suspicion is that from the POV of post-Crisis Europe, the demographic issues will look huge, and they'll wonder how it all got so little attention in the 90s and early 00s.

China and Japan are heading for trouble, too, if things don't change."

Japan, which wants no part of immigration, is solving its shortage of young workers in the way Isaac Asimov first outlined 50 years ago. Their latest is an Eldercare robot. They also have Peoplewash machines which will give you a bath and shampoo. I'm not kidding! Forgot the link; I read this weeks ago.

Automation is one thing that could offset some of the economic problems of a sub-replacement birth-rate...but it won't fix the core of the matter.

Among the complications of the whole mess, for example, is China, which has succeeded in driving its birth rate below replacement, by ruthless and harsh means, but who have saddled themselves with two major demographic problems (along with the moral ones) in the process:

1. The average age of their population is going to rise starkly, without the West's advantage of already being rich, and

2. A dangerous gender imbalance among their younger cohorts, they have a substantial surplus of males.

This is a combination for potential major trouble, not too far down the road. What sort of trouble, nobody can say, the only thing we can be sure of is that the status quo is unsustainable. I can think of several possibilities, but I can't evaluate their probability.

As for Japan rejecting immigration, well, yes. But, if their population keeps falling, eventually they'll get immigration whether they want it or not, and whether they give permission or not.

Originally Posted by MichaelEaston

As Odin said, things never stay the same through the crisis. It's impossible to predict exactly what will happen, although I find it hard to believe there won't be A) A significant backlash toward immigration, especially Muslim immigration and B) A significant reduction in the World population.

The decrease in global population isn't a sure thing, barring all-out nuclear war or the like (which of course is not impossible). But the West's demographic crisis looks set to be inevitable now, the question is just what the effects will be.

As for immigration...societies with consistantly sub-replacement birth rates are stuck in a dilemma, if the birth rate stays low, then it's a choice between immigration and economic and political and social decline. But immigration without assimilation is also a form of death in a society with a declining birth rate, the society will be remade in the image of the immigrants. The majority of a society sets its shape and tone, either officially or unofficially, deciding what the terms of interaction for the minorities will be, and what is and is not acceptable behavior.

And yet again, assimilation is a tough sell when the assimiliating society is clearly declining in number. The problem feeds back on itself.

Consider countries like Spain or Germany (1.28 and 1.39 by the CIA figures). Those are positively morbid rates, if they don't rise again Spain and Germany, as societies, are in terminal decline, either by population collapse or immigrant transformation.

We see the effects of this in debates like the admission of Turkey to the EU. Its the elephant in the room that (so far) few people are willing to admit is there. Turkey would already be one of the largest states in the EU by population, and it's population is growing fast while Europe's is on the verge of shrinking. Don't think that isn't on the minds of many of those who don't want to see the EU expand into the Islamic world.

It's showing up in France, too, some of Le Pen's disconcerting popularity derives from this problem. Again, it's something nobody really wants to talk about, but increasingly everyone knows it's there.

A country with a consistant birth rate far below replacement is unable to be self-confident, by the very nature of the matter. All their thinking and planning has to be defensive, not just militarily but in every area. Every new development has to be evaluated through that lens. We see the effects in Europe all the time, nobody wants to talk about the big elephant, but it's there.

Originally Posted by Odin

I've been horribly busy with my classes. Spring semester's barely started and I already have a big lab project for Microbiology class!

Perhaps mycobiology would be more interesting.
http://www.fungi.com/books/stamets.html#MMR
http://www.fungi.com/kits/indoor.html
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=597

My dad got me an oyster mushroom kit for Christmas. It's done with the mushroom making part. My curious INTP mind has an experiment going right now in the garage. I broke the kit up and mixed in with a bunch of junk mail and used coffee grounds from work. In theory, I should be able to convert junk mail into delicious oyster mushrooms.

Btw, wouldn't your career consist of a whole bunch of "lab projects" or is the anger due to the fact that the instructor picked the project and Odin couldn't pick his own out ?

"...for decades, the West has been losing faith in itself...

"If we truly don't value Western Civilization, we should be willing, perhaps eager, to let our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren live under different conditions. Some people even argue that the declining birthrate in Europe is the physical manifestation of that mentality. Enjoy the maximum material comfort and don't even bother to curse our notional progeny with existence in our terrible civilization, which is racist, sexist, homophobic, materialist, and imperialist-all things that flowed from four hundred years of world domination by the West...

"The irony is that we have been so dominant that there has been nothing to measure ourselves against-except our own ideals. Certainly the Chinese, Hindu, and Muslim cultures between 1600 and 1950 were not significant enough to be noticed or cared about by most people in the West.

"Measuring ourselves against our own ideals we found ourselves wanting. Indeed, since the Enlightenment, one of our central ideals has been to question authority. But given the dominance of the Wesrt and the weakness of the rest of the world over the last three or four centuries, the only authorities worth questioning were our own: kings, Christianity, capitalism, materialism, white people.... All our own institutional authorities were the natural and vulnerable targets of our civilization's relentless self-questioning.

"But how bad do all the shortcomings of Western civilization look if the alternative is radical Islam right in the heart of Europe or America?"

Originally Posted by Tim Walker '56

A rally of the State phase, broadly similar to the Hellenistic Age. An important feature of most of the MilSaec was the Cold War-which provided an external threat that the West could unite against. With the end of the Cold War this glue has disolved.

Will militant Islam be the next threat that the West can unite against?

Extrapolating the patterns of world history

Originally Posted by MichaelEaston

And SAT prep courses are the biggest waste of money in the whole entire world (that I can think of).

Roger that. I just got a prep book, saw that most of the junk on the test for the English section were actually Latin in origin. I then just found a book about Latin prefixes/suffixes, etc. An example from poker is the word, "ante", which maps to "before".

Originally Posted by Odin

Yikes! I hated the SAT.

Man, how times change. I didn't mind the SAT at all. Mom gave me one of her 10mg Valiums before I wnt to take the test. I was at one with the world after about 20 minutes.

Cultures can change by expressing latent potentials.

The largest change in Western religious history was the appearance of Protestantism. This was a version of Christianity that harkened back to that religion's Judaic roots (scroll down to my August 25h post). This new version of the West's religion proved durable; where it became established it coexists with the Catholic Church rather than completely supplanting it.

During the Boom Awakening came a new Creative Ethos (scroll down to my June 20thpost).

Historian Arnold Toynbee wrote (A Study of History) that a given society will have an ethos. It may be an aesthetic ethos, or a religious ethos, or a warrior ethos. The West was described as having a mechanical-or mechanistic-bent, which could be used to design a mechanical clock or organize a parliament. Perhaps because it is fairly similar, a Creative Ethos might coexist with the older mechnistic bent for a long time.

Of course, Protestantism came out of one of the most intense Awakenings ever, the Reformation.

The Boom Awakening was also very intense.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

Roger that. I just got a prep book, saw that most of the junk on the test for the English section were actually Latin in origin. I then just found a book about Latin prefixes/suffixes, etc. An example from poker is the word, "ante", which maps to "before".




Man, how times change. I didn't mind the SAT at all. Mom gave me one of her 10mg Valiums before I wnt to take the test. I was at one with the world after about 20 minutes.

Rags,

Did you have to take that stupid little English composition section that they experimented with during our high school years? We in the high school class of '79 were the first class that had to take it. I guess that is another example of that 1961 cohort factor showing up again. But I'm not sure how long they kept it. As I can't recall hearing much about it after I graduated high school, I don't think that they kept it for very many years.

I wreckon they's afeared dat we'ses X'ers writes no goods ifin day don't give us dat! :

Actually, I guess that it was an early warning sign that our education would be denigrated in the future by publications like A Nation at Risk .

Do any other jonesers remember what I'm writing about?

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Historian Arnold Toynbee wrote (A Study of History) that a given society will have an ethos. It may be an aesthetic ethos, or a religious ethos, or a warrior ethos. The West was described as having a mechanical-or mechanistic-bent, which could be used to design a mechanical clock or organize a parliament. Perhaps because it is fairly similar, a Creative Ethos might coexist with the older mechnistic bent for a long time.

The record is obvious enough for the West: a culture good at building things is also good at re-building things and picking up the pieces. It's also capable of re-inventing itself. So far the United States exemplifies that well; the Axis Powers whose leaders believed that the United States and Britain were so set in the inevitability of decline from cultural decadence found that entrepreneurial, materialistic societies that seemed to have no culture other than hedonism could change directions quickly and decisively. Automobile factories started churning out tanks and military aircraft. Companies that had been making camping gear were making military survival gear. Motion picture studios were putting propaganda into great drama and comedy. The businessmen took the cues of sure high profits to create a material basis for a complete victory.

After World War II, America's Cold War rival (the USSR) often coded itself as "Sparta" and the USA as "Athens", choosing to identify themselves with a militaristic barracks society and America with a money-grubbing, hedonistic, free-wheeling society. As events showed, it was the free-wheeling society that survived in both ancient and modern times.

The strength of the United States or any other liberal democracy is that if one finds the commercial culture objectionable, one can find alternative ways to make a living. Art. Intellectual endeavors. Religion. Fringe politics. Indeed one can even commercialize hedonism (as did Hugh Hefner).

@

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

After World War II, America's Cold War rival (the USSR) often coded itself as "Sparta" and the USA as "Athens", choosing to identify themselves with a militaristic barracks society and America with a money-grubbing, hedonistic, free-wheeling society. As events showed, it was the free-wheeling society that survived in both ancient and modern times.

Sparta ultimately defeated Athens. It was in turn conquered by Macedon, and then Rome. In every case, the "barracks society" won.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

Sparta ultimately defeated Athens. It was in turn conquered by Macedon, and then Rome. In every case, the "barracks society" won.

Sparta defeated Athens *temporarily*, backed up by a bunch of former allies who were sick to death of Athenian arrogance and by home-grown conservative scared (or disgusted) out of their minds by the Great Awakening that produced Socrates (prophet? Hero?) and his less admirable followers Kritias and Alkabiades. And they won by starving Athens out. You can even see the Siege of Athens in the charts given in "The Great Wave!" Massive spike in the cost of basic commodities.

Temporarily - Athenian exiles abroad started a revolt from, I think (someone correct me if I'm wrong) Thebes, and chased the Spartans back to Lacedemonia.

Athens lasted from then till Alexander the Great, who was, Like Julius Caesar, a military genius and who improved on the phalanx. His empire lasted only till his death and then broke up - the western part went back to being more or less as it was (let's not get into Hellenistic history here until the Romans conquered everything in sight.

As to the Barracks Society winning - it's even odds who won there. Like Mongolian China, Rome was actually culturally conquered from within - twice. First by their educated Greek slaves; then again by that upstart Jewish cult that had incorporated Greek philosophy and preached some very un-Roman things.

And even Rome began as a Republic and kept that form for centuries.

Awhile back I mentioned a young Xer woman who had returned from a vision quest. I wondered where the idea of a vision quest came from.

I have an intriguing work of anthropology entitled Man's Rise To Civilization As Shown By The Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State by Peter Farb.

"Indians elsewhere also believed in the reality of visions, but none so relentlessly pursued the vision quest and were so caught up in the emotional excesses of religion as the Plains tribes...."

So the vision quest came from the Indians!

"The change produced in one culture by its encounter with another is called 'acculturation.' Rarely is the exchange of cultural traits an equal one, and never does one emerge entirely untouched; the encounter almost always results in an increased similarity between the two cultures...."

I have considered how a far future West might resemble the Byzantine Empire.

The most significant culture difference between Byzantine and Graeco-Roman culture was religion-Christianity supplanted the old paga pantheon.

The great missionary religions have been three: Christianty, Islam, Buddhism.

Islam clashes so much with the West that the West would be extirpated.

So...

A zen West?