I have a theory that I haven't found expounded before. It came from a combination of travel through 60+ countries, living and working and interacting with local people on a pretty intimate level sometimes, and study of lots of history. It's going to be controversial and maybe even shocking, so brace yourself for a moment before reacting please. I think peaceful societies self-destruct. With a few notable exceptions t…
Have you read "The Fates of Nations" by Paul Colinvaux? It's a fascinating - and disturbing - book, covering the exact topic you are talking about. But where Colinvaux and myself would disagree with you, is the direction of the cause and effect. My interpretation is that a society starts off warlike. At some point it either conquers, or is conquered by its neighbors. Once the empire is at its natural borders, war no…
Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.
181–190 of 217 posts
Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.
#182I have a theory that I haven't found expounded before. It came from a combination of travel through 60+ countries, living and working and interacting with local people on a pretty intimate level sometimes, and study of lots of history. It's going to be controversial and maybe even shocking, so brace yourself for a moment before reacting please. I think peaceful societies self-destruct. With a few notable exceptions t…
The standard quote about all the peace in Switzerland leading to nothing other than the Cuckoo Clock and all the strife in Italy leading to the Renaissance comes to mind.
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As human beings we want to give 'meaning' to our lives and underplay the role genetics and survival of the fittest play.
We also want to pretend that we don't have a baser nature and that we can 100% 'civilize' ourselves.
So we often make the wrong assumption that the perfect natural state is perfect harmony where everyone taps into some global 'peace wave frequency'.
Is it possible? Who knows.
It's just interesting that it's never happened. Ever. There has never been a point of time when the entire world was at peace. There are always wars because human nature never changes - no amount of 'civilizing' can change that, nor can everyone pretending that we are flawless perfect peace-loving creatures.
Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.
#183I have a theory that I haven't found expounded before. It came from a combination of travel through 60+ countries, living and working and interacting with local people on a pretty intimate level sometimes, and study of lots of history. It's going to be controversial and maybe even shocking, so brace yourself for a moment before reacting please. I think peaceful societies self-destruct. With a few notable exceptions t…
You come up with only a single, high level reason for what could have thousands of reasons, and you seriously come up with one that is a detriment to our entire species. Draw from that conclusions on your capacity and will for logical thinking, sorry this has to be blunt. You are the modern day crusader. You get an idea in your head with next to no logical reasons and then start to proselytize everyone around you. I'…
His theory still holds true. Unless you can conclusively argue that 'Peace' isn't the MAIN reason for the downfall of non-warring civilizations and countries - don't see where your argument leads.
In a way you're supporting him.
Finally, he's pointing out something that might be The Truth. If it's the truth then it says a lot of positive things about his capacity for logical thinking and his ability to be HONEST with himself and others.
Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.
#184I have a theory that I haven't found expounded before. It came from a combination of travel through 60+ countries, living and working and interacting with local people on a pretty intimate level sometimes, and study of lots of history. It's going to be controversial and maybe even shocking, so brace yourself for a moment before reacting please. I think peaceful societies self-destruct. With a few notable exceptions t…
As another poster remarked, strong nations adopting a warlike attitude to preserve their vigor is probably not going to work out well in a world full of nukes and bioweapons. If that becomes a popular approach, we're all dead. It's an interesting claim. I don't think I buy it--the U.S. is entering our period of decline right now, and our belligerence is, if anything, accelerating that--but maybe you'll make a longer…
The last few wars were attempts to strengthen the US - quite frankly Oil really is more valuable for the US than winning the title of prom king.
Regardless of your or my personal opinion on what the war is doing there can be little doubt that Iraqi and Afghanistani Oil is going to play a huge part in the US keeping its position in the world.
The thing that actually unsettled things is that the Wall Street people got out of control and made too many inroads into the Government and started stealing from the Average American.
Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. I agree that most divorce proceedings do favor women. 2. As a friend of an attorney who tells me that most of his male clients never seek custody and don't even petition for visitation rights until the CS payments start coming due this is completely inline with our society. I'm sorry, but once the divorce is finished most guys just want to move on with their life, the family they had becomes an encumberment. Most…
Point #3 is not entirely true. The article seemed to imply that the law was all about advocating for the child, instead of pandering to a disagreement between the biological parents at the (possible) expense of the child. This implies that I may not even need to have sex to be forced into child support payments. For example, what if someone sneaks into my bedroom at night (or maybe we're sharing a hotel room while tr…
Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.
#186I have a theory that I haven't found expounded before. It came from a combination of travel through 60+ countries, living and working and interacting with local people on a pretty intimate level sometimes, and study of lots of history. It's going to be controversial and maybe even shocking, so brace yourself for a moment before reacting please. I think peaceful societies self-destruct. With a few notable exceptions t…
This is patent nonsense. Every society has its day in the sun, military or not, and then collapses. The US is doing this as we speak - despite having the most powerful military the world has ever known, and almost spending more on its military than the rest of the world combined. It's been far from peaceful in the timeframe that Europe and Japan have been (several official wars, quite a number of unofficial ones). Fa…
Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Point #3 is not entirely true. The article seemed to imply that the law was all about advocating for the child, instead of pandering to a disagreement between the biological parents at the (possible) expense of the child. This implies that I may not even need to have sex to be forced into child support payments. For example, what if someone sneaks into my bedroom at night (or maybe we're sharing a hotel room while tr…
Imprison the woman for rape and get full custody due to criminal ineligibility of the woman? (And being in prison at the time). Then when she get's out of jail you get child support payments. It sucks to have some stranger's child, but usually women who do this know the man in some way.
Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.
#188Seems to me that the article missed the most central point. Let's start with a little, simple, relevant background: (1) In the past, e.g., in tribal or agricultural communities, women had children whether they really 'wanted' to or not. (2) Now in more industrialized countries, a significant fraction of women have some options. Some women still have children but some women do not want to have children and do not. (3)…
> After a few such generations, we will be left with a much smaller population with many fewer women but nearly all of whom WANT to have children. Then the population will start growing again. This is a fascinating and well-thought-out analysis, but it seems to make two potentially-dangerous assumptions: 1) It assumes that those women who really WANT to have children, have this desire mainly because of their genetic…
Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.
#189Seems to me that the article missed the most central point. Let's start with a little, simple, relevant background: (1) In the past, e.g., in tribal or agricultural communities, women had children whether they really 'wanted' to or not. (2) Now in more industrialized countries, a significant fraction of women have some options. Some women still have children but some women do not want to have children and do not. (3)…
> After a few such generations, we will be left with a much smaller population with many fewer women but nearly all of whom WANT to have children. Then the population will start growing again. This is a fascinating and well-thought-out analysis, but it seems to make two potentially-dangerous assumptions: 1) It assumes that those women who really WANT to have children, have this desire mainly because of their genetic…
There is another point on my side: It is commonly accepted that what children do is a mixture of both 'nature' (genes) and 'nurture' (that is, what they learned from their parents). There are common, strong suggestions that a daughter of a women who is really happy being a mommy is more likely to want to be a mommy. So, net, for a woman to WANT to have children can have come down from nature or nurture.
In my experience, some women REALLY want to have children, and some women REALLY do NOT want to have children. When I was in the ninth grade, I met and dated a girl in the seventh grade, natural blond, great figure, very sweet, who REALLY wanted to have children, knew it, admitted it. E.g., each time she saw the face of a baby with its common characteristics, she wanted to have a baby. Now, I'm not saying that she wanted to have a baby there in the seventh grade, but she wanted to be a MOMMY eventually. And she was, eventually.
And I've known women who had children or not and, in both cases, looked at motherhood as "giving up the best years of their lives and their careers doing low grade, menial scut work to take care of some MAN'S [bitter resentment and anger about the man] children". Sure, the position was partly just negotiations as "don't throw me into that briar patch" but also was meaningfully genuine.
Net, now, some women WANT to be mommies, and some don't. Does this situation inherit, via nature and/or nurture? My observations say that it does. My observations are not very good data, but if the observations are roughly correct then we conclude that the effect, even if weak, could be how Mother Nature will "find a way".
More generally I have confidence that Mother Nature will 'win' this one, will meet the challenge, will "find a way"!
While I believe that the 'way' I mentioned, that women WANT to have children, and that this will get passed from mother to daughter, is the one Mother Nature will select, there can be other ways. E.g., a society can get rid of anything like US Social Security and, thus, tell people in stark terms that they need to have children as a source of support in old age. A society can tell girls that it does not support single women or single mothers and, net, girls should look for good husbands or hope that they have good brothers or have good inheritance from their fathers.. There can be a role for some traditional religions that strongly emphasize 'traditional family values' and having children, whether the women want to or not. Some people might say that the result will not be a change in the gene pool but in the popularity of some religious, social, and/or political values.
Or one might just say that the 'Darwinian' effect will apply to whole societies, e.g., Finland: Finland beat Sweden, Russia, and Germany in wars but is losing out to the 'feminists'! Whatever the politics, at 1.5 children per woman, Finland is on the way out of it as surely as some genocide. So, maybe it's countries that will die off instead of people with the wrong genes. Still, I trust the influence of genes more than that of politics.
Your issue of "N generations on" is interesting: In part my analysis is saying that the women were much the same 40,000 years ago, which would be about N = 2000 generations! So, it would seem that we could extrapolate a few generations from the N = 2000 generations! But, in part my analysis is saying that, if you will, the current, big 'environmenal' changes, i.e., from women having jobs, will bring the biggest changes in the gene pool in 40,000 years and bring the changes very quickly, in, say, just a few generations, say, just 100 years. My reading of evolution is that, when the 'enviroment' changes, then genes can change very quickly. E.g., the genes in some of those weak, sick, or dead limbs on the tree are already gone forever.
Re: Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
this happens largely because contract law is ignored by judges whenever contracts violate their ideals. activist judges are a very serious issue that has huge costs for society. corporations are resorting to third party arbitration because enforcement of contracts by the prevailing legal system is not reliable.
activists judges are a serious issue?