Great Britain: extinction status since 1972
Britain needs to transform itself from top to bottom if there is even going to be a generation of British in a hundred years time.
As humans, we are genetically fixated on what could potentially harm our physical bodies, and our primal brains always perceive the worst. Could that rustle in the bushes be a tiger? Could those loud footsteps be a bear? Could a powerful gamma ray burst strike our celestial neighbourhood and fry the earth in an instant (the answer is yes, at any time, without warning, and it’s probably happened before)?
For better or worse our biological makeup has barely changed since its inception, and hasn’t had time to change at all since the industrial revolution, let alone the advent of portable super-computers or probes that escape the solar system.
Nevertheless, we remain hardwired to spot danger – it is what has kept our ancestors, and you, alive. Yet, in this world which has exploited human nature for profit or other nefarious means, it has walked blindly down the path of its own destruction. For the sins of gluttony, pride, and most surprisingly of all, lust, has not reversed a suicidal trend that has marched unopposed into the heart of our civilisation for the past fifty years, and its crippling blow has fallen upon many other nations.
This article will now highlight the slow dripping poison known as a low fertility rate. In order to replace each generation, the average women must give birth to 2.1 children, so that she replaces herself and her husband (or fleeting one-night stand) before departing this mortal coil.
Britain has not hit the magical 2.1 mark since 1972. Two generations have since come and gone. The closest she has come to poking above this figure was in 2008, when the fertility rate hit a thirty year high of 1.9. Then, as many may well remember, the Great Recession swept across the globe, and since then, Britain’s fertility rate has been sinking into the abyss, now sitting around 1.6.
As is the case with the myriad of shrapnel-laden hand grenades that Britain’s political class kicks down the road, no effort has been taken to reverse this cataclysmic trend. Parliament only talks about fertility once in a blue moon, and even then, it would have to relate to a party bashing punchline relating to child tax credit or the differences in the stillbirth rate between certain ethnicities.
Important issues for sure, but there is never any altruistic effort taken to tackle the barren elephant in the room. To nobody’s surprise, national leaders from abroad have expressed a deep concern about their respective nation’s fallen fertility rate while implementing economic incentives to encourage couples to have children. One of the most noticeable examples being Victor Orban’s Hungary.
In Japan, often heralded as a poster child of the West’s childless and dystopian future, the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (who himself never had children due to infertility) remarked that the land of the rising sun was heading rapidly towards twilight, facing an existential threat harboured by a rapidly ageing population and a diminishing fertility rate.
His successor, Fumio Kishida, has branded rising birth-rates a key objective of government, alerting Japanese politicians to the existential threat posed to Japan’s economy and geopolitical security by a top heavy age pyramid. Though how successful he’ll be in the land of the Karoshi and the Hikikomori is yet to be seen.
Unlike Japan, Britain has no plan, spirit, or will. However, lack of procreation among those of childbearing age in Britain is not due to anti-natalist theology and abortion laws that put Carthage to shame (though these factors do play a role). It is a matter of economics.
It will take the most ruthless of bread winners and frugal of housewives to ever raise children in this economy. Existing in a housing market that is so perverted and parasitic, thirty-something professionals have to house-share renovated drug dens just to break even each month; a job market so unstable that your future family’s food security will always exist on a knife-edge; the nation’s world beating and highly efficient infrastructure doesn’t do any favours either.
Britain needs to transform itself from top to bottom if there is even going to be a generation of British in a hundred years time. But the way the wind is blowing, it won’t take your breath away.