The most profound existential task of every human community is to give birth and raise the next generation in physical and mental health, which is essentially a temporal "continuation" of the adult generation living today. Written by László Bogár.
In recent days, the 5th Budapest Demographic Summit took place, where politicians (including, for example, the Italian Prime Minister), scientists, and media personalities came from sixty countries to discuss the undoubtedly most important (in the strict sense of the word, "questions of existence") of human existence.
All of this is of great importance because, although it would be extremely important, today there is no such comprehensive and universally accepted method of narration that would be able to give a reassuring answer to this most serious challenge of humanity. These important conferences cannot have the goal of creating such a globally coherent narrative either, but mutual listening to different ways of telling stories can perhaps help humanity to create this narrative.
In this article, I would rather just try to outline what and how we should think through in order to have a chance to create a unified narrative method and, of course, as a result of this, to create an action strategy that can give a chance to the increasingly ominously congested waves of crisis treatment.
Perhaps we should start from the simple statement that the deepest existential task of every human community is to give birth and raise the next generation in physical and mental health, which is essentially a temporal "continuation" of the adult generation living today.
If we look around the world today, we see an unsolvable and inexplicable chaos, because where all the external conditions for this are available, we mostly see fatal underpopulation, but where there are almost no conditions for this, there is catastrophic and unmanageable overpopulation.
Neither the prevailing population theories nor the political strategies mostly based on the prevailing population theories have a really satisfactory explanation for this shocking asymmetry. In order to provide a well-founded, comprehensive explanation of why the world's population processes work exactly the opposite, as elementary logic would dictate, we would have to go one level deeper in the interpretation of existence.
American demographer Benjamin Wattenberg, or rather population philosopher, writes that capitalism is the best contraceptive, and this wittily cynical statement may bring us a little closer to understanding the essence.
Indeed, demographic patterns are based on the determinations of the way of being in which the given human community lives. In other words, if the logic of "cost benefit" dominates not only the material, physical, but also the spiritual, moral, and spiritual reproduction processes, then the decision to have children is also based on this. However, in the market sense, having children is inherently a deficit "project", as it is a huge "expenditure" that lasts for a long time, and the unpredictably long-term "return" is uncertain, if and if the return can be interpreted at all.
It is a fatal misunderstanding, for example, to think that only the mandatory "single policy" introduced in 1980 in China has radically reduced the fertility rate, because since it was abolished, and even encouraged to have three or more children, the fertility rate has been falling sharply since then, and today it is only 0 .8 is needed for stagnation, compared to 2.1. Or, for example, in South Korea, where there were no restrictions of any kind, the fertility rate dropped from 7.0 to one-tenth, 0.7, in fifty years.
And it can hardly be denied that in China, South Korea and many countries in East and Southeast Asia, the most successful "super-capitalism" in world history has exploded into dominance over the past decades.
No matter how unpleasant it is to face this, Westernized modernity, i.e. the "something" that is usually referred to as "capitalism" in a simplified manner and with some falsification of the essence, i.e. the process during which, as Viktor Orbán put it, we have become "hedonistic pagans", humanity it changed its entire logic of interpretation of existence and its organization of existence based on it.
And what else could a hedonistic heathen, exclaiming "carpe diem", think of but the continuous increase of the mass of material suitable only for the satisfaction of physical pleasures, which is commonly called "economic growth" and which every political system considers as its main legitimating base, regardless of whether how it destroys the external nature (earth, water, air) and internal nature (spiritual, moral, spiritual foundation) of human existence.
But what about the regions of the world where, instead of the 2.1 fertility required for balance, this rate is still around 7-8, despite the indescribable poverty and the two most basic conditions of life, drinking water and agricultural land does not even belong to those who live there today?
As a result, more than three billion people in Black Africa will be born into absolute nothingness by 2100. The explanation is relatively simple, because the "capitalism" there needs the "prole" to "proliferate" without limit, because this proliferation makes it possible for this region to be plundered without limits at extremely low wages.
And if the "overflowing" surplus of billions of people can be unleashed as a "migrant" army of locusts on the peoples of the West, which are becoming defenseless as a result of its demographic collapse, then "double plus is good" for the "non-existent" masters of the world.
In summary, if we want a comprehensive narrative to describe the world's demographic chaos and if we want a real solution, then we should also face these very delicate connections.
