The process of cultural decay is front of mind for those engaged in the pronatalist movement. The question of how it happens was raised by Robin Hanson in his recent appearance at NatalCon. His goal is to discover what cultural elements have contributed to fertility decline, which he contends will accelerate movement towards a self-destructive way of life. Conversely, he looks to the positive developments that have come before us and they are evidence that “culture is humanity’s superpower.” From his standpoint, this ability has come about because of natural selection and that humans have proven themselves capable of cultural evolution, and now, perhaps, cultural devolution.
Another claim he lays out is that one of the drivers of cultural evolution is the importance of status recognition. The idea goes that humans tend to mimic the behaviors of those perceived to hold lofty stature. For Hanson, one of the most powerful modern status markers is educational attainment. When it comes to marriage formation, he’s onto something here. Indeed, as others have pointed out, this is a primary driver of mate selection in the modern West. Charles Murray has demonstrated that this is, in fact, one of the most important parameters in mate selection since the mid-twentieth century.
For Hanson, this is a poor marker for mate selection, especially if one values a growing population. Just as wealth had been a highly important status marker for marriage in the past, which in his view has previously led to fertility decline—education as a status marker has done the same. If this selection mechanism leads to lower overall fertility, it then arguably turns into cultural decline (something that Hanson doesn’t thoroughly define).
He also distinguished between micro and macro cultures—with smaller peasant groups typifying the former and the modern, nation state embodied in the latter. Hanson observes that macro cultures are susceptible to devolution to a higher degree than smaller, more nimble cultural units. The current state of the West, in his view, is represented by a “global monoculture of elites.”
Here he echoes a process that Bernd Widdig referred to as “massification” (Vermassung) and interestingly, Widdig saw that this process was a consequence of—wait for it—inflationism. He defines it as: “the transformation of formerly distinct entities into larger and larger numbers, which causes the single entity to lose its former value and distinctiveness.” Widdig’s account of the cultural attitudes and practices that emerged in the midst of the Weimar hyperinflation come forth in a somewhat obscure 1994 article that’s unfortunately loaded with critical gender ideology. Its value, however, is made in a simple observation that—for the middle class in the midst of an inflationary episode—this loss of purchasing power and identity is, “an attack not only on their social status but also on traditional structures of gender identity and sexual dichotomy.”
Indeed, the sexual division of labor is impacted by inflationary monetary policy—men become more like women and women more like men. As this division of labor is reduced, the male-female distinction is eroded due to the universal pursuit of increased income in the labor market. Josef Pieper called this phenomenon “proletarianization.” One would expect that, when the “massification” of gender is intensified, that the consequences of gender differences, embodied in mating, fertility, and child-bearing and rearing will recede. Cue the fertility crisis.
Returning to Hanson, from his evolutionary perspective, he believes the fertility crisis isn’t economic in nature, but is a biological response to a more peaceful, healthier, and wealthier state of affairs. Further, he claims that this more fruitful life has led to less pressure to reproduce, and that—because of the decreasing degree of biological threats (despite the howling of green doomsdayers)—fertility is less urgent for our species, and fewer children are born.
For Hanson, the change in biological pressures that are presented in the modern world has fundamentally altered human nature and culture. He further asserts that humankind is devolving backwards toward a “forager culture.” In such a culture, there’s more promiscuity, travel, democracy, laziness, decadence, and short-sightedness. At the same time, there’s less religion, childbearing, slavery, and war. The reason? It is because the “selection pressure has been turned off.” Essentially, the cultural decay that he describes is merely a biological response to a lack of threats to species survival.
If one adopts Hanson’s worldview—that human beings are merely physical material—then all of this is a plausible and an eminently reasonable set of claims. At the same time, the implications of his approach and conclusions smack of Teddy Roosevelt’s so-called “strenuous life” which exalts “strife” as the means to achieve “true national greatness.” Simply put, the application of biological threats like war and the fertility problem solves itself—at least among the survivors.
However, this anthropological claim stands in stark contrast to Mises’s methodological dualism. Early in Human Action, he noted that,
Reason and experience show us two separate realms: the external world of physical, chemical, and physiological phenomena and the internal world of thought, feeling, valuation, and purposeful action. No bridge connects—as far as we can see today—these two spheres.
For Misesians, human action and its outcome—culture—originate with the human mind, not from merely materialistic processes.
Ultimately, Hanson’s thesis on the degenerative trend in culture and fertility needs to be rejected on anthropological grounds. His perception of men and women as merely physical entities—without real thoughts and ideas—can’t account for the differing fertility choices made among couples. Further, it’s the Misesian anthropology and economics that provides the best explanation of the drivers behind fertility decline. Indeed, as couples have different ideas about the value of children, the experiences that are most important in their lives, their views on how to deal with scarcity and even inflation they seek differing solutions. However, when an external force like central bank-imposed fiat inflation is foisted upon all, there tends to be a “massification” of attitudes that is more short-sighted than it otherwise would be. To be sure, raising children is no short-run matter and neither are long-run cultural investments that stand the test of time. When this set of ideas takes hold, cultural degeneration is sure to follow.
