Demographic Decline : A Long Term Sociology
Economics have been discussed ad nauseum. Let's look ahead to see what the future looks like from a less materialistic standpoint. When we finally say good by to the Consumptive Atomized Culture
Y’know, how sometimes I output an entire Thesis as a single article? This is one of those times. I hope this is well worth the read, as there’s aspects of modern demography heavily overlooked in the current era.
Also (at the end) a discussion of how “solving” the problem could be the bad end.
The 21st-century and 22nd-century populations are undergoing the most significant demographic contraction in human history. At a global level, human populations have not contracted this quickly since a bottleneck event roughly 900,000 years ago. Some nations and populations are still growing, while most are contracting at an alarming rate.
The results will have a significant effect on culture, social systems, economics, and military readiness. The world we’re blindly marching into will be subject to radical changes and reforms simply to cope with rapid demographic implosion. Outside of specific plagues and small populations targeted for genocide, this degree of demographic decline has no precedent. To lose 30% to 60% of the population in a single generation resulted in radical social changes during and following the Black Death.
Even then, that’s a poor analogy given the age-composition of the surviving populations (mostly working-age) and the relatively small scale (one region at a time rather than everywhere all at once). The changes in our lifetimes, looking forward, will be more extreme, difficult to prepare for, and will occur faster than almost anyone realizes.
Importantly, the effects on culture, race, and technical ability are going to be dramatic, and there exists no framework to plan for them.
Population Contraction
All of our industrial and fiscal systems are set up for growth. The 20th century saw the largest population boom in human history. That boom created an outburst of innovation and aggressive industrial and military expansion. World Wars 1 and 2 were instigated by nations with massive youthful populations, and new religions to fight for (liberalism, communism, and fascism)1. The 1950s baby boom in the United States was a product of those kids coming home and starting families. Truly an incredible era of growth.
Booms don’t last forever. The demographic hangover from the rapid globalization and industrialization will be felt globally. Looking back on 30 short years of abundance has left a bitter taste in the mouths of those now expected to live in its shadow. A Coyote Ugly wakeup call.
A United Nations Population Study in 2022 had the global population peaking in 2085 at 10.43 billion people. The 2024 update to the global population trends now has a peak in the global population occurring in 2082 at 10.29 billion people2.
The difference between 10.43 and 10.29 isn’t all that much until you consider the numbers being looked at. That’s a difference of 140 million people. That’s the entire population of Russia today. A small update to the United Nations’ future population projections after 2 years produces a difference equivalent to the cumulative population of the physically largest country on the planet.
I suspect that the United Nations projections are somewhat radical overestimates.
If I were to throw my hat into that ring and guess based on available data and vibes the human population will reach a maximum at roughly 9.3 Billion people somewhere around 2065. It is likely that demography will alter economics which will alter demography in a feedback loop. As industrialized nations begin to become economically stagnant (or even contractive), they will no longer have the resources or public will to support foreign populations.
Already immigration and cutting off foreign aid are major political pressure points for young populations. As a result, nations relying on food and especially medical imports will find themselves cut off. This is a problem for populations and economies that have been reliant on international aid for generations. As a result, large numbers of people will face major resource shortages in the global south just as their fertility rate drops to replacement levels or below.
As a result, large swaths of the Middle East and Africa will find themselves swallowed by demographic decline. Only nations host to harsh gender-inegalitarian cultures will maintain growth: Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, the Amish, etc. And it’ll be decades before those populations are large enough to meaningfully alter global demographics.
As such, the global population may contract faster and far more forcefully than existing UN projections indicate… with a peak under 10 billion and a date up to a full generation earlier than the year 2080.
Whether the UN projections are correct or the more aggressive projection above is correct, the industrialized world will see major demographic constraints. Particularly in East Asia and Europe, the most industrialized nations on earth.
The fertility rate in the United States (2025) stands at 1.62 births per woman. Not good, but a lot better than some of the others: South Korea, which stands at 0.75 births per woman. In 1 generation, the working-age population of South Korea will contract from what it is now (51.5 million people) to 19 million people.
That is economically apocalyptic.
By 2035 (10 years from now), China is estimated to have a population of 400 million people above the age of 60.
Inverted population pyramids are dangerous things, economically. Old people do not produce goods and services; they are net consumers of goods and services. An entire nation of pensioners (retirees) will produce no goods, but will consume medical equipment, drugs, consumer goods, electricity, and food.
Numerous reports have been written regarding demographic decline through a materialist lens: economic impact reports, military readiness, immigration, and replacement migration.
In practice, demographic decline appears to correlate closely with urbanization, meaning that this problem could self-correct over a few generations if given time3. I strongly recommend the video below as a materialist preamble to the continued discussion. Alternatively, there is also a relevant substack article here4.
While economics has been a central concern, less attention has been given to the long-term cultural and spiritual impacts that this massive population contraction will cause:
Our cultures define wealth, status, and power. Innovation and religion, and national borders. Our spiritual history defines subtler things like the way the elderly are treated, and the way we define ourselves as a people will also be felt as a consequence of these extreme changes.
What will a homeland feel like when you’re the only child in it?
A Review Of The Ruins
Humans are tribal. We are individuals defined socially by those around us. What happens when the collective exchange of information (the collective unconscious) radically contracts over a few generations?
I have made the argument that sapience itself is a product of language. Sapience is reliant on language, the capacity for an internal monologue. Thus, the exchange of abstract concepts between individual humans is necessary to create a functional person5 6 7.
Before examining the spiritual ramifications, understanding the future material and political conditions will be necessary:
WAR
The first significant side-effect is that in the next generation or two, human life is going to become more valuable. Unless AI systems can fully automate war and infrastructure maintenance, people will remain valuable. Even more valuable as the amount of infrastructure that needs maintenance will quickly outstrip the capacity of the people in a nation to perform that maintenance. In warfare, additional automation will be favored, but mass production will be limited.
Soldiers are valuable. Nations like the United States that already operate on a humanist system are going to militarily outstrip nations like Russia, as they have historically relied on meat-grinder strategies. Even in nations like China (and in another generation and a half, India) are going to find that their populations consist of inverted population pyramids8. The social ramifications are immense. In war, no family will want to send their only son off to war to have him come home in a body bag.” It’s the end of the family line when that happens. Mom and Dad will have nothing left but a bitter resentment towards the government that initiated the war.
To combat potential destabilization, national militaries are going to avoid major engagements, instead preferring border skirmishes. Total war is going to be far too resource-intensive in the face of strained infrastructure systems and a shrinking population. Even nations that would have historically gone to war will prefer saber-rattling and diplomatic concessions backed by threats of force.
Combat is going to consist more of elite operators, drones, and competition between industrial output capabilities. Atomic and chemical weapons will play a major deterrence role between Great Powers, even as they engage in active combative skirmishes with one another, similar to the Russo-Ukrainian war, but on a smaller scale.
POLITICS
Democratization occurred due to the need for massive citizen armies. With the appearance of gunpowder and pike-and-shot formations, a few elite knights ceased to turn the tide of battle. Thus, the political process had to begin by including the underclass, leading to economic reforms, liberalism, John Locke, and the Consent of the Governed. This isn’t the first time in human history this has occurred; in the Classical era, combat engagements shifted from small groups of elites to large formations of legion soldiers. Warfare democratized during the first half of the Classical Era, leading to the democratization of nations.
Bronze Age → Centralization of Government; war conducted by small groups of elite soldiers
Classical Age → Democratization of Government; war conducted by large formations of pikes and spears
Medieval Age → Centralization of Government; war conducted by small groups of elite Knights
Modern Age → Democratization of Government; war conducted by large formations of musketeers and riflemen
Post-Industrial Age → Small groups of elite spec-ops soldiers, AI, and Drones
What will make the future post-industrial age more interesting is that people will still be needed, likely in larger quantities than available: people will need to build drones, run factories, maintain decaying infrastructure. So only a semi-centralization of government is likely. As a monarchist, I hope that we’ll see a reform away from full democracy, but not all the way to absolute autocracy. A sort of middle ground with inherited leadership roles9.
The social pressures will further reduce economic mobility. If your family isn’t among the “wealthy” land-owning class (the class capable of owning and maintaining at least a few homes or apartment buildings), then you never will be. Those who own assets will dramatically outpace those who do not for the next several generations. Keeping and maintaining passive income streams and land holdings will become a calcified aspect of class.
In the United States and Western World, government will follow: major voting reforms are likely, and the instability created by a perpetual precariate class will entrench divisions into what becomes a semi-formalized system of nobility. A “Great Families” governance structure similar to what Rome had in the days of the Empire.
So the future can expect a dramatically smaller global population, warfare conducted by small groups of elites, infrastructure decaying due to lack of use, and a population that operates under an informal class-structure that gradually becomes formalized over several generations.
MIGRATION
Immigration is going to cease being a problem in the next 60 years. Partially, that’ll be because the United States and other Western nations will have major border controls as a backlash to the free migration of the early 21st century. Even caliphate nations like England will drop “free migration” the moment that an ethnic majority retakes power. So that what they did with their invasion doesn’t happen again.
More than that, economic incentives will shift. Nations as a whole will be loath to lose their populations. They already aren’t producing enough people to sustain what they already have. One or two nations likely will institute significant restrictions on emigration (China, India, or Russia being likely candidates). Then those reforms will sweep across the world globally.
Latin America is facing a radical decline in fertility as of 2024, with some nations expressing fertility rates as low as 1.3. The “endless hordes of Mexicans” flooding into the United States will first be cut off by major border reforms, then it’ll slow to a trickle. Then, nations like Chile, Uruguay, Cuba, Jamaica, and Mexico will institute emigration restrictions in an attempt to prevent people from leaving. It’s unlikely that nations will fight to raise immigration, but they’ll also become more and more reluctant to lose what they already have.
RESIDENT-WORKERS in the UNITED STATES
The combination of a population decline, emigration controls, and decaying infrastructure will incentivize bringing in new workers. The absolute disaster of mass migration in the 21st Century, however, will also make simple immigration reform a non-starter politically. As a result, the United States is likely to (somewhere around 2055 at a guess) institute a “Resident-Worker” program. This will be especially easy after birthright citizenship is revoked.
The resident worker program will allow foreigners to live in the United States, have children in the United States, but not be classified as citizens. Labor shortages will be propped up through this program and will effectively create a permanent slave-caste in the United States. Which will be its own massive can of worms. Further, government reforms will likely allow those of the US precariate class to “sell” their citizenship (probably in exchange for clearing their student loan debs or something) and join the Resident Worker class.
The resultant social contentions will be handled with elite groups of law enforcement and automated drones. Made easier with Due Process being far simpler for Resident Workers as compared to US Citizens.
MARRIAGE FOR STATUS and WEALTH
Already, we’re seeing that marriage and dating are no longer following the “just sweep her off her feet” societal expectation of the boomers. Marriage will be about economics and children as much as anything else. Women will begin to marry for the status and wealth of a future husband. This will lead to major social reforms through the upcoming Axial Age, as a few wealthy men will keep 5 or 10 concubines until a moral taboo is placed around doing so (again)10.
Likely, religious communities like the Amish will eventually have enough legal authority to end such behaviors through the institution of adultery laws or something similar by the year 2100. What form that takes will probably vary depending on the nation and state. The leadership will see the advantage simply in hopes of getting the fertility rate up in the nation at large. So far, no nation has managed to turn around a negative fertility rate. Expect this to become a wedge issue between future political parties.
WHAT ABOUT AFRICA?
Africa and a few parts of the Middle East will grow until the mid-21st century in terms of population, according to UN projections. “What about them?” The United Nations is incorrect. United Nations projections presume that the amount of foreign aid that such nations have been receiving will continue to receive ad infinitum. As the First World in Europe either Islamizes or becomes Radically Isolationist, the flow of aid to the Third World in Africa is going to slow dramatically: Medicine, food, and high technology are all going to become hard-to-find commodities in the Dark Continent.
Combined with the next generation absolutely refusing to permit free-migration to the First World again after the 21st Century disaster, Africa is going to hit a sort of hard wall in terms of economic growth. Much of Africa has been oriented towards Western Aid or Chinese Resource-Extraction economies. Eventually, the aid will slow or stop. When that happens, massive civil wars will erupt, interrupting the resource-extraction economies, causing further decline. Africa will be a hotbed of political violence, disease, and famine until it goes through a major restructuring process. African migrants will be unwelcome everywhere despite critical labor shortages. The social interests of a nation will clash directly with the economic interests of every nation. Those who open the flood-gates to Africa will be… disappointed with the quality of the average worker they gain, as much as they’re infuriated by the resultant social problems.
As a result, Africa is likely to become economically isolated outside of a limited extraction economy, causing a significant slowdown in fertility and accelerating population decline by 205011.
ECONOMIC STAGNATION
The modern world cares about economics far beyond spiritual well-being or social cohesion. Thus, the resultant effects of economic stagnation. A smaller workforce, coupled with an inverted population pyramid, means that large quantities of resources will be shuffled from the young and productive to the old and infirm. This occurs in the United States via taxation and social security. It occurs in nations like China due to a social-filial responsibility. In either case, nations will see a stagnation in GDP.
Thus far, the stagnation has been concealed through inflation, although that even further cements the divide between the Patrician asset-owning class and the Plebian rentier class. The result will be greater social tension, but a lack of revolutionary spirit.
SOCIAL CALCIFICATION
For a nation to undergo a revolution, either a social revolution (like the 1960s or 70s) or an actual violent revolution (like Bangladesh or the American Revolutionary War, or the French Revolution), certain conditions must be met. One of the most important is that the average age of the nation needs to be 26 or younger.
The average age of the United States is 37.8 as of 2023, and only going up. The average age of nearly every nation on earth is rising at an alarming pace. The average of China is 40.1. The average age of India is 28.8 and rising. The results of this will be not only an economic stagnation, but a cultural stagnation as well. New Music, New Ideas, and the Spirit of Vitality associated with youth are getting torn down by the older generation, who prefer comfort, stability, and predictability to revolution, reform, and growth.
There’s a reason why Metallica is still played on the radio while new musicians who would have been lauded as revolutionary are now confined to the corners of the internet. The reason isn’t solely because of a flood of information; it’s also because those who already achieved cultural hegemony aren’t giving it up. The older generation isn’t listening to obscure lo-fi beats or Fash-wave artists like Xurious. They’re listening to Metallica. The fact that they’re in their 50s doesn’t seem to bother the producers. Culture is driven by economics… and the boomers are responsible for the majority of consumer spending in the United States today, just as they were in 1975.
The results will be a radical form of cultural stagnation. This is also why you see so many 68-year-old retirees at far-left “no-kings” protests and similar nonsense. It’s because that generation is still larping as if they’re 21 and attending anti-segregation rallies in 1977. When the average age of the population rises into the 50s, expect even more of this nonsense.
Children Among the Ruins
If you’re a millennial hoping that one day you’ll get “your turn,” forget it. The generations above have set Millennials up for failure. The best most in that cohort can do is get out of the way and make space for Generation Zyklon and the Alpha kids after them. Hanging onto the “old ways” will achieve very little in the coming decades.
The next generation is going to refocus away from mass media. They’ll bifurcate into those consumed by AI systems and produce no children (generation Beta) and those who do produce children, but as a part of more unique and exclusionary microcultures. Those who survive this bottleneck will be resistant to powerful economic and cultural forces telling them not to have kids. This’ll either be due to poor decision-making and an inability to plan long-term, or through the creation of extremely strong and localized cultural systems12.
Growing up in an environment of decaying infrastructure, shrinking (real) GDP, and a highly stratified class system isn’t going to be easy for anyone. Least of all those who were born into a world of AI best friends, instant information, and an endless supply of slop entertainment13.
There will be no revolution; changes for the next few generations will be slow, deliberate, and very conscious of the mistakes of their elders. A generation raised by AI will need to become socially independent to function as effective humans… either that, or they’ll effectively become drones on behalf of the machine of production.
Human life will be valuable, something to be cultivated. The world, however, will run counter to that. Attempting, it will feel, at every turn, to make them work longer hours, harder, for less and a lower standard of living every day. That tension will form the basis for a spiritual reform that will manifest after several generations of decline.
There’ll be a certain bitterness for previous generations, but also an acceptance. Unlike the millennial generation, who grew up at the peak of neoliberal consumption in the 90s, Generations Zyklon, Alpha, and Beta aren’t going to have seen the same heights, nor been filled with false propaganda about the way the world should be.
Many aspects of (good) children’s media are already taking into account that living in a normal suburban house isn’t something most kids can do. Some even have decidedly post-apocalyptic vibes if you’re aware enough to look for them14.
As a result, future generations will be possessed of a “make do” attitude rather than a “can do” attitude. Blackouts will occur in first-world nations. The government money-printer will become less powerful as countries are forced to convert to more mercantile and isolationist forms of trade. Various attempts to “fix” the problems of a declining population will be instituted to varying degrees of success, but it’s unlikely any will actually work.
If anything, the legal system will face challenges due to an unwieldy bureaucracy and a completely uninterested public. Again, we’re seeing the beginning of this already. With the laws being so esoteric that the average citizen couldn’t follow them all, even if one tried, getting caught breaking the law is treated more like a natural disaster or a car accident.
“Oh, damn, well shit happens sometimes.”
The legal framework in the United States and across the Western World is treated as optional for everyone who isn’t white… and the white population is beginning to treat it as optional as well. There’s no reason to follow the law when it’s confusing, and you’ll be prosecuted sometimes, even if you did everything right to the best of your ability. So why try? Future generations will treat the “law” as a carry-over from a prior age that’s enforced only because the state has resources to prosecute. Only via direct coercion, constant surveillance, AI systems, and drones. The moment there’s a hiccup in the infrastructure (and there will be, as the people will simply not exist to maintain all the infrastructure), the legal system will collapse into local tribes.
It will be seen less as a crucial failure and more as an opportunity for opportunistic individuals or clans.
The next generation will make do with what they have rather than wishing for more. Localized production via 3D printing, machine shops, and small high-precision mills will be used to keep older technology running long past its functional lifespan. Not because new things aren’t available, but because new things will be more expensive and far harder to fix. “I’d rather get the piston replaced in my old F-150 than buy a new one, because replacing the piston is cheaper.” The new precariate/rentier class is going to spend less on consumption. This, in turn, will lead to even more economic stagnation. This will lead to a lower GDP. which will lead to lower fertility rates.
A downward spiral that no civilization has yet been able to crack. What’s the point of having kids when they’ll just be liquidated so some boomer can feast at your expense?
“Boomer” is going to become a derisive social role. Rather than referring to a specific generation, a social role will be gradually created for the geriatric. Not a nice one either. “Boomer” will approach slur status as older generations are going to be asked to shut the hell up and get out of the way. Already we’re seeing an aggression to old farts that refuse to retire, instead hanging onto power until their 80s, or 90s. Or in the case of Henry Kissinger, age 100 in 202315.
Tales will be spun, and the trope of the “all-consuming lich” will become a staple of media as society rebels against the idea that dignity is deserved at all in old age. The Otter wrote an excellent piece about Cronus the Primordial Boomer, which aptly displays the type of myths likely to be reborn for a “modern audience” over the next century or so16. The baby boomers may well become mythologized as the men who were given everything by their parents, and worked hard to ensure their children would receive naught but scraps.
More social tension as people will love their own grandma/grandpa, but the social atmosphere among the youth will be more and more aggressively ageist. As the social contracts get more difficult to maintain, cultures will further localize, as those individuals who want to have families and kids seek an “out” from the larger breakdown of culture and infrastructure. I doubt we’ll get to the point of warlords, but if we do, Blue Vir has an excellent article on the subject17.
On Race
A lot of current-age racists probably aren’t going to enjoy where things go during this period of decline18. The modern idea of “race” is heavily tied to the system of globalized trade. Once upon a time, “French” and “Sicilian” were seen to be as distinct as the modern “Indian” and “Chinese”. The idea of race, racial consciousness, and racism are going to be restructured over the century or two of decline that the world is looking ahead to.
The economic stagnation and need for labor, combined with a vitriolic resistance to migration, will result in “people coming together.” That is, economic stress will mean that current economic conditions get even worse. Folks will need to rely on their parents and friends for childcare, church groups, and informal communities. As a result, those groups are going to form the basis for budding microcultures. Children raised within one of those groups will form lifelong friendships with their peers.
These types of microcultures will be under significant social stressors, creating the aforementioned fertility-bottleneck we’re reaching now. Those peer groups that are successful will have children of their own; those peer groups that are unsuccessful will evaporate after a generation or two. Each of these microcultures will develop unique memes, rights of passage, and manage to keep in contact long after their members are grown, quite unlike the atomized society of Western civilization today.
Importantly, those peer groups will not be race-based. Some may be associations formalized by the current Millennial and Zoomer populations that begin based on race; those are likely to proceed in the same manner. Most, however, will be groups of convenience created by Zoomer parents that become formalized over time. As a result, many aspects of early 21st-century race will shift to a modified form of tribal demarcation by the late 21st century. You’ll absolutely see association-based judgment, and some race-based judgment. However, the primary focus of the microcultures will be seeking out a peerage among similar microcultures. Clans of humans seeking each other out in a world of decayed infrastructure and bureaucratic dysfunction.
The next generation will congregate in association with microcultures similar to their own, less in accordance with economic drivers (as in a stagnant economy, those aren’t as powerful for some urban areas over others), and less in accordance with the modern conception of racial politics.
In an odd turn, egalitarianism will return to vogue as productivity and a willingness to be shat on by a managerial-corporate system will be favored attributes in the “normal” economy. While socially, roots within microcultures and neo-clans will be preferred over simply being blown about life as a disconnected leaf on the wind.
The result will be a form of ethnogenesis in the United States where it dissociates from its culturally European heritage. “American White” will become a broad categorization spanning both what we regard now as Anglo-Saxon Americans, Castizos, and Orientals.
Economic drivers will focus on individual productive capabilities, while social drivers will focus on a clan or peerage over a larger national or state identity.
The Decline Won’t Last Forever
If current trends continue, then by the year 2200, the Amish will represent the majority of American citizens. In the year 1900, there were only a few thousand Amish people. As of 2018, there were approaching 350,000 Amish people. As of 2025, the current Amish population is estimated to be around 400,00019.
The Amish, some Mormon sects, some parts of Africa, a few nations in the Middle East, Kazakhstan, and Orthodox Jews in Israel are about the only growing cohesive populations on the planet. In the 2024 election, the Amish vote radically swung the election of Donald Trump in the state of Pennsylvania, cementing his election.
What these populations have in common is orthodoxy, an insular religious community, and a lack of gender-egalitarianism (except Africa, but most of Africa will be below-replacement rate here in the near future). By the year 2100, the Amish vote and the Mormon vote will be crucial to winning a US presidential election.
The population decline won’t last forever and will likely reach a peak around 2100 before beginning to stabilize. At that point, the culture of the United States will look wildly different. Individuals will almost universally associate with a sort of clan-peerage that may look like an extended Mennonite family, a formalized Church-Clan based around a Baptist or a Mormon Church, or a specific Amish village.
The wandering clans and atomized individuals of the late 21st century will be a memory of the “Great Demographic Transition” that the world underwent. A restructuring to a more stable society, and likely transition from a society of “progress” to a society of “stability” will be a wild shift. It’s unlikely that weaker nations like Canada will survive the process, instead becoming subsumed into neighbors with federated and looser systems. A United States Empire as a competing states similar to the Holy Roman Empire.
What comes out the other side will not be a single national culture but much smaller and more personal microcultures that exist for the people who actually live in them. Expect mass media to be dead, and expect a lot of new and interesting social taboos surrounding how, why, and when people use social media.
The Wildcard: Automated Human Factories
There’s a single wildcard in all this. I know that China is working on it, and future analyses of culture are incredibly hard to predict if it’s effective. Factory Farmed Populations.
Why encourage your people to breed a new generation when you can just genetically engineer one instead? No troublesome parents to tell the state not to meddle in the lives of the kids, no uppity Karens talking about how her daughter is special. The ability to simply produce more good little consumers and lie to them about the way the world works, with no one getting in your way.
If artificial womb technology is developed, we could easily find ourselves in a race to a dystopic bottom the likes of which humanity is entirely unprepared for. A cyberpunk dystopia would be better than an AI-governed mass-produced humanity. The elites aren’t going to see these drones as people, and many are likely to pop out of the factory at age 16 with no conceptualization of history, human rights, creativity, or purpose aside from working for the machine.
Potential options for where this goes are anyone’s guess. It could be a glorious utopia, a dystopia, or more likely, a combination of the two:
Humanity effectively becomes a eusocial species with an “elite” at the top and “workers” at the bottom.
Humanity effectively becomes a mono-gender species, where young women are produced only as objects of entertainment and young men are mass-produced to work in the mines or fill in spreadsheets
Humanity becomes a mon-gender species where young men can have and raise their own kids, creating a paradise where wasteful expenditures are eliminated in exchange for dreams of conquering the stars.
The Elites decide to automate the entire system and use the Earth as a jumping-off point, treating it as an automated resource-extraction tool for their personal ambitions.
A workers’ revolt tears down the species, but the education was so poor and the propaganda so intense that Humanity very nearly goes extinct. Without easily-accessible fossil fuels, the industrial revolution could never have happened again, and humanity is trapped on this rock forever, never achieving previous heights.
A spiritual figure emerges and reshapes what it means to be human in this brave new world.
Your guess is as good as mine. If we get factory-produced populations, then we’re well into the realm of science fiction. It’d make a good short story. Or novel. Or book series.
The “Axial Age” is a term for the period between roughly 200 BC and 200 AD. It is the time in which Christ, Buddha, and Confucius all lived. Mass markets and mass communications forced major spiritual reformations that we still see today. We are on the edge of a new Axial Age in the West… or perhaps we’ve already entered it. Historians may point to WWI as the beginning of the Industrial Axial Age. Further information on the Axial Age and a Second Axial Age is available at this link
The associated image is from the kids’ show “Tumble Leaf.” The wrecked ship has been repurposed as a home for the main character, Fig the Fox. No explanation of how the world got this way is given.
I use the term “racist” in a technical sense, not in an accusatory sense. That is to say, “those who ascribe race as a primary aspect by which to judge character.” This is not an attack, but rather an indicator of a political position… White nationalists in particular, but black nationalists, Indians (just nearly all indians at this point), and anyone else who holds race as the centerpiece as predominant descriptor of economic or cultural value.
Interesting article. Have to admit was pretty persuasive.
One point I'd like to add is that non-white immigrant populations to the west, their fertility is actually crashing harder than native western populations within a generation or two. Alongside their deep levels of unhealthiness, for example, currently 74% of blacks in Britain are overweight and actually morbidly obese, this collapse in fertility will mean, once welfare and health care is taken away, these populations will effectively burn themselves out.
I saw a recent video charecterising non-white immigrants into the UK and other western countries as "mayflies" due to this trend, which has been noticed in the science communities, but is largely being obfuscated and put down to racism.
Fascinating stuff.
I disagree about race not being a big deal. Pretty much all studies show that looking alike and having similar genetic tendencies lead to higher levels of group cohesion. Group cohesion seems to be what you think will be important in many aspects of life, which I agree with.
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"If artificial womb technology is developed..."
It's been used on livestock for years, at least experimentally. Japan very recently began using it on humans, so there is no "if."
https://engineerine.com/japans-artificial-womb-breakthrough/
Now combine that with genetic engineering for some real nightmare fuel. Imagine a few million "Max Zorin" characters, who probably will look like a chinee Christopher Walken.
https://youtu.be/lvxumh7ULx4?t=11
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"A cyberpunk dystopia would be better than an AI-governed mass-produced humanity."
I remember joking about this some time ago. William Gibson's cyberpunk works were supposed to be a dystopia, but looked at now it would be towards the 'best case scenario' end of the spectrum. Governments and corps that simply don't give a shit about the lower orders, leaving them alone as they are too busy competing with each other to care. Tech progresses at astounding rates, including the beginnings of space exploration and the settling of near-earth orbit, even by the lower orders who figured out a way. Go-getters amongst the lower orders have ways to climb, if they are smart and ruthless enough.