Yesterday we wrote, under the title Weird Behavioral Science, about the declining teen birth rate. Today comes an article by The New York Times' Ross Douthat reacting to the same Vox article. He makes some interesting points, differing from those I wrote yesterday.
Douthat links to a RealClearPolicy article by Robert VerBruggen which discusses new Center for Disease Control data on births - legitimate and otherwise. CDC begins with the idea that non-marital births have declined, but VerBruggen notes that, as a percentage of all births, they remain essentially the same. All births have declined -- marital and otherwise.
Mulling Douthat's article, and VerBruggen's, an apocalyptic thought came to me. Suppose what we are seeing is a cultural, perhaps even a species-wide fertility inflection point that first became obvious in Japan.
Maybe just downward, maybe the first step toward species extinction a la Bartleby, a Melville character known for saying, "I would prefer not to." What if people "would prefer not to" reproduce? What if increasing numbers even "would prefer not to" engage in non-reproductive recreational sex?
Perhaps we will learn too late why Earth has not been contacted by star-faring intelligent species. Just maybe with a certain level of social development comes the seeds for species decline and extinction. Imagine if intelligence and/or civilization, instead of being survival traits, are evolutionary dead ends, species sidetracks to oblivion. Maybe the great apes will inherit planet Earth.
Hat tip to Fred Barnes at The Weekly Standard for the Bartleby reference, which Barnes uses in to describe our President's unwillingness to perform the duties of his office.
