Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

"We can sort you out. No problem. We can help you," the doctor told Jennifer Hannington. Then he turned to her husband, Ciaran, and said: "But there's not much we can do for you."

The couple, who live in Yorkshire, England, had been trying for a baby for two years. They knew it could be difficult for them to conceive as Jennifer has polycystic ovarian syndrome, a condition that can affect fertility. What they had not expected was that there were problems on Ciaran's side, too. Tests revealed issues including a low sperm count and low motility (movement) of sperm. Worse, these issues were thought to be harder to treat than Jennifer's – perhaps even impossible.

"In general, when you get below 40 million sperm per millilitre of semen, you start to see fertility problems," says Hagai Levine, professor of epidemiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Sperm count, explains Levine, is closely linked to fertility chances. While a higher sperm count does not necessarily mean a higher probability of conception, below the 40 million/ml threshold the probability of conception drops off rapidly.

In 2022, Levine and his collaborators published a review of global trends in sperm count. It showed that sperm counts fell on average by 1.2% per year between 1973 to 2018, from 104 to 49 million/ml. From the year 2000, this rate of decline accelerated to more than 2.6% per year.
We are facing a public health crisis and we don't know if it's reversible – Hagai Levine

Levine argues this acceleration could be down to epigenetic changes, meaning, alterations to the way genes work, caused by environmental or lifestyle factors. A separate review also suggests epigenetics may play a part in changes in sperm, and male infertility.

"There are signs that it could be cumulative across generations," he says.

The idea that epigenetic changes can be inherited across generations has not been without controversy, but there is evidence suggesting it may be possible.

"This [declining sperm count] is a marker of poor health of men, maybe even of mankind," says Levine. "We are facing a public health crisis – and we don't know if it's reversible."

Higgenbotham wrote: Fri Feb 23, 2024 9:54 pm First generation: (born around 1960 plus or minus a few years) Parents were not exposed to synthetic chemicals until they were adults. Anecdotally there seem to be a few more obese kids, geeky kids, gay kids, kids with allergies, kids needing orthodontics, etc., but nothing too alarming and kids seem to grow out of some of these problems. The birth rate for this generation falls a bit when adulthood is reached but nothing too dramatic. There may be a few years decrease in life expectancy becoming evident.
Second generation: (born around 1985 plus or minus a few years) First transgenerational effects may be seen, in other words, parents who were exposed to these things during their own fetal and childhood development start to have kids. In addition to what plagues the first generation born around 1960, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorder, autism, more severe allergies, diabetes, and other disorders become more common and less curable. Some are now common enough to have names and to be screened for. This generation sees a dramatic fall in their birthrate upon reaching adulthood.
Third generation: (born around 2015 plus or minus a few more years) Now going out on a limb. Transgenerational effects are now quite noticeable and influence the culture and economy to a great extent. There are lots more lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adults compared to generations born before World War II, so many in fact that an acronym to describe this phenomenon is thought to be needed, LGBT. It is rare for a child not to have some kind of disorder. Disorders become even more severe; for example whereas many children born in 1960 may have been a bit geeky, now many are severely autistic. The birth rate for this generation takes a dramatic fall to less than half of the birthrate of the generation born before World War II.
Fourth generation: (born around 2045 plus or minus a few more years) Now really going out on a limb. Transgenerational effects in the mainstream American culture are now so severe that fertility and lifespan are affected to the point that it is evident mainstream culture is no longer viable. In most cases, disorders are so severe as to be irreversible and in many cases untreatable.

Male infertility contributes to approximately half of all cases of infertility and affects 7% of the male population.

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu May 30, 2024 3:31 pm This is what the can looked like after she left:

Guest wrote: Fri Jun 07, 2024 7:03 pm

aedens wrote: Fri Jun 07, 2024 1:21 pm "I'm tired of having my ancestors compared to today's migrant hordes. Settling an undeveloped land and building a civilization out of it is not comparable with showing up to an aging, post-industrial nation and looting it." The Biden legacy is sealed in stone. Failure.

The pilgrims did not live off welfare benefits.

Guest wrote: Fri Jun 07, 2024 7:03 pm

aedens wrote: Fri Jun 07, 2024 1:21 pm "I'm tired of having my ancestors compared to today's migrant hordes. Settling an undeveloped land and building a civilization out of it is not comparable with showing up to an aging, post-industrial nation and looting it." The Biden legacy is sealed in stone. Failure.

The pilgrims did not live off welfare benefits.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Jun 08, 2024 12:58 am

For what it’s worth, I think most civilizations are clever but not wise — wise cultures don’t become civilizations.

Can you give some examples of wise cultures? And what does it mean that they don’t become civilizations? What’s the difference between culture and civilization?

A civilization is a culture with cities. If you want to see a wise culture, look for one that’s been around in a stable form for several thousand years; they’re out there.

From various paces in the comments section of this link from the Archdruid: https://www.ecosophia.net/the-flight-from-prediction

There was a similar discussion on page 3 of this dark age hovel. "However, there are primitive civilizations that do have processes (as opposed to this industrial civilization - which doesn't) to assess and identify individuals who have wisdom and put them into positions of responsibility and authority. Those are the villages and their elders." I should have said primitive cultures.

Guest wrote: Sat Jun 08, 2024 8:43 am

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Jun 08, 2024 12:58 am

For what it’s worth, I think most civilizations are clever but not wise — wise cultures don’t become civilizations.

Can you give some examples of wise cultures? And what does it mean that they don’t become civilizations? What’s the difference between culture and civilization?

A civilization is a culture with cities. If you want to see a wise culture, look for one that’s been around in a stable form for several thousand years; they’re out there.

From various paces in the comments section of this link from the Archdruid: https://www.ecosophia.net/the-flight-from-prediction

There was a similar discussion on page 3 of this dark age hovel. "However, there are primitive civilizations that do have processes (as opposed to this industrial civilization - which doesn't) to assess and identify individuals who have wisdom and put them into positions of responsibility and authority. Those are the villages and their elders." I should have said primitive cultures.

Across the Anglosphere there is this new reality dawning that “social cohesion” is eroding away. The narratives and chants of “tolerance” is goodness, we have always been “multicultural”, and “diversity is our strength” have lost their power to the point now they can be quietly smirked at or even openly mocked. Keeping the pathological luxury beliefs of the political class alive now requires evermore intense appeals (ie emotional blackmail) to the “goodness” of the general public. Therefore full strength gaslighting on the “conspiracy theory” of "the Great Replacement" and the existence of any “culture war” is the norm.

In the UK, this now even requires rolling out the ultimate public policy solution to achieve social cohesion - National Service. But all of this is counter productive - especially NS - in a world where decades of political leadership has endorsed globalism, maligned the patriotism of the ethnic majority, derided borders, and is always silent on if the teenage citizenry will ever be able to buy a home or raise a family.

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Feb 02, 2023 9:49 pm During the descent into a dark age, it seems the social breakdown comes first, followed by the economic breakdown. One of the catalysts to the recent social breakdown was to uproot people from their established places and make their existence nomadic. This was promoted by slogans such as "you need to go where the opportunities are" or "get an education and a better life", things like that. This process sort of fed upon itself; for example, people are uprooted and, as a result, spend more dollars with corporations whose business models are indirectly based on uprooting people, which in turn results in even more people being uprooted. As an example, let's say you own or work for the general store in a small town, a unique store. You are probably going to be working and living in that small town your whole life. But if Wal-Mart comes into town and uproots that store, then you are likely to become one more corporate nomad moving from place to place and frequenting businesses whose names you recognize. I referred to that process a bit here:

Higgenbotham wrote: Wed Dec 14, 2022 10:32 pm Another thing that relates to that is there is a moral code in rural areas versus a moral code in urban areas. I witnessed this conflict as I grew up. My grandparents spent their entire lives in a rural area; my parents spent until age 18 in a rural area and 34 working years in a city. They couldn't wait to get the hell out. As kids, my sister and I went back to their home every year and were immersed in rural culture for a week. I think part of the huge divide in this country has to do with the fact that more and more families have spent several generations in the city and have not been exposed to rural culture in any meaningful way at all, as my sister and I were.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sun Dec 25, 2022 1:06 am I said there are two opposite modes of living in the United States. The first is an expectation that you will spend your entire life in one area with other people who will spend their entire lives in that area. The second is an expectation that you will go to high school in one place, college in another place, then career in several places (no longer at one company) with sole focus on that. Everything else is something in between. The first mode engenders real connections while the second mode engenders transactional relationships. An example of a transactional relationship would be something like, "I have a buddy who is also 420 friendly. He finds me really good dope cheap and I fix all his computers." The best example of a transactional encounter I can think of is prostitution. Also, in a big city, encounters are briefer. That's not to say there isn't some overlap.

I told her in the second mode of living, people are taught from an early age to look to the next step in their progression and to primarily engage in transactional relationships as a means to get to that next step. A high school kid might be told to be friendly to the teachers because they will be writing college recommendations or whatever. They would not be encouraged to be friendly to teachers they genuinely like and not be friendly to teachers they genuinely do not like. And so on when the kid gets to college. I should add as an aside that girls are better at that than boys. I told her that while coping with the stress of getting from step to step, people who find themselves in the same boat will bond somewhat. But they know those bonds are likely temporary and will be broken when they get to the next step unless there is a practical reason to keep them. I also told her that people who have lived in transactional relationship mode for several generations do not even know how to live differently and can't. Many do not understand what a real connection is.

During the early stages of this breakdown, many of the new corporate nomads gathered together in suburbs of large cities and, being first generation nomads, attempted to re-create the kinds of social bonds that were present in the places they came from. This worked pretty well for a time, until those people died off and the second and third generations stopped doing this. I think this was described best in a book called Bowling Alone and thought it had been discussed here, but don't find anything offhand. I'll continue to look for that.

Also, during the early stages of this breakdown, there were economic losers and beneficiaries. The beneficiaries were the corporations who could cookie cutter their outlets across a previously interesting and varied landscape, producing the forlorn, bland, and ugly architectural landscape that now exists across America. McDonalds perhaps being one of the first and best examples. During the heyday of the expansion of McDonalds, along came the "great investors" who realized they could make a lot of money investing in this concept, people like Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch. Lynch described what he called the "ten-bagger" which was a stock where you could invest a dollar and that investment would multiply quickly to 10 dollars as these corporations cookie-cuttered their outlets across the country. Expanding in this way made a corporation hungry for capital and there was a class of people who got rich providing it, including many corporate nomads who recognized what was happening from observing their own lives. However, many more missed the boat, even though it was somewhat obvious.

It now appears this stage has been winding down for some time. Again, there are those who recognize this. I posted this awhile back for another reason, but will repeat it here with the relevant part underlined:

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Dec 29, 2022 6:05 pm

Trump-supporting billionaire Home Depot founder says 'nobody works anymore' because of 'socialism'

Many reasons have been thrown about as to why the U.S. is still in the midst of a historic labor shortage, including a decline in fertility rates, older workers retiring in droves, the lingering effects of COVID-19 infections, and of course, worker demands for fairer pay and more expansive benefits.

But Bernie Marcus, the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot, says it’s really simple: People just hate capitalism now. Because of “socialism,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times published Thursday, “nobody works. Nobody gives a damn. ‘Just give it to me. Send me money. I don’t want to work—I’m too lazy, I’m too fat, I’m too stupid.’’

In today’s business climate, Home Depot may have been able to only open 15 or 16 stores, Marcus said, compared to the 2,300 locations the retailer currently has scattered around the U.S. For Marcus—an unabashed supporter of former President Donald Trump, often to his own company’s chagrin—the reasons behind today’s unfavorable environment include the current administration and the “woke” establishment’s involvement in business.

In the wide-ranging interview, where Marcus—worth over $5 billion according to Bloomberg—touched on everything from his reputation as a prolific philanthropist to his inclination for Milton Friedman’s business-first interpretation of economics, the former CEO lamented capitalism’s slow demise in the U.S. while criticizing the “woke people” he thinks are eradicating free speech.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/ ... 259be365f6

The question is, given the end of this era, what has been coming and is now well over over the horizon? I think for the answer to this we have to look at the early history of Bill Gates and Microsoft.

Guest wrote: Sat Jun 08, 2024 11:45 am In a new Dark Age, wouldn't America just be destroyed by foreign enemies? Conan the Barbarian wouldn't have a chance to emerge in that case.

In August 1998, Moroccan and Tunisian
asylum seekers who were being held on the Italian
island of Lampedusa destroyed their detention
centre in a night-long orgy of violence. For fifteen
days they had watched through barbed wire fencing
as western tourists sunned themselves on a nearby
beach, laughing and joking, enjoying good food
and copious quantities of wine and beer. Eventually
they could take no more and, with temperatures
touching 40 degrees, erupted in a spasm of riot and
arson. This is a microcosm and a warning of
what the future holds in a world where large
numbers of hungry, brutalised, third world youths
are daily being televised the image of fat, spoilt
white people living it up at a party from which they
have been thoroughly excluded. The west’s present
insouciance may be thought breathtaking.

The neo-barbarian invaders of 2050 will leave
little clear record of their activity, for they will
destroy as they go. Future archaeologists will have
to guess at the horrors that might have occurred.
They will have to judge from the rubble, the signs
of burning, the apparent changes in racial mix of
local populations, and the abrupt silencing of a
once articulate and exuberant civilisation.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Jun 08, 2024 12:18 pmI'm unsure whether foreigners will sweep through in this manner. My guess is no.

cleaning things up are you know it's one two three four
21:13
you know and and it's a percentage game you're trying to steadily move back to gradual gradual process yeah but but
21:20
what we want is I I don't think we want to leave the system because civilization requires systems yeah what we want is
21:28
you know we want to return our culture to a moral base we want to support the
21:34
rule of law and and then we want on top of that to build an economy which is
21:40
productive and productivity requires meritocracy and it requires competition
21:45
and it requires transparency particularly if government money and that's got inverted you know now
21:51
government money in many places is secret and our money is totally public because they're surveiling us so and and
21:58
you're focusing on the state level why the state level not the national level okay so this is why and and this is the
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tremendous advantage that the states in the US have over many countries around the world under the Constitution the
22:14
states delegate the powers to the federal government so the the powers of the federal government were created and
22:21
delegated by the states the states have the power to take them back number one
22:27
they have the power to enforce them so uh Texas just sent a notice of default
22:32
to the government um because the government had failed to protect it from Invasion which is one of the
22:38
government's job the federal government's jobs and the powers not delegated to the federal government are
22:44
reserved to the states so the federal government the states have more power in
22:49
theory than the federal government now if you look at the history of the power relationship it's always been
22:55
compromised because the central bank can print debt based currency and hand out money and if you talk to any state
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treasurer or state official they're getting bought with that money so the F
23:07
and and and the very clever trick in the constitution is the states can do gold and silver but they can't you know they
23:14
can't print money so so the trick here is you got a central bank federally that
23:20
can print money and and that allows Congress to hand out you know not just
23:26
appropriated money but if you look at the black budget and all the sort of cover things going on they're ending at
23:31
a lot more than that because the federal government since 1998 is in massive violation of all the financial
23:37
management laws and the Constitution yeah so that's one of the things you uncovered discovered back in the in the
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'90s uh which eventually also led to all the problems that you had to deal with
23:49
my prediction is the day will come when the states not only call a default for failing to protect against Invasion
23:55
they're going to call a default for failing to follow the financial management laws and start demanding the
24:01
money back that's been stolen what would that eventually mean then a full disintegration of the United States well
24:08
I don't know there there are different ways this can go and I think a lot of the people who are trying to globalize
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the dollar system want to see the states break up so you know so I think there's
24:19
a reasonably good chance you could look at a breakup of the United States it's not unlike what happened at Soviet Union
24:25
you know after or what's going to happen in the European Union most likely right so so if the states break up you know
24:31
the chances that the European Union will break up before during or after is very high so because if anything you know the
24:38
dollar channel has has kept itself Strong by weakening Europe and um and
24:45
that puts Europe you know you're really watching Germany get it's weaken
24:51
significantly and if that continues you know the thing holding the European Union together was the strength of
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Germany and the agreement of France and Germany to kind of keep it together but that could fall apart so the European
25:05
Union looks more fragile as a union to you than the United States I you know I don't I don't have
25:13
enough intelligence to really make an intelligent comment on that I mean I
25:19
wish I knew but I I don't know for sure I think if you if you look to me the
25:25
dollar system is being globalized now it's been globalized by the euro dollar as well yeah but but basically you have
25:32
uh a central banking system and a dollar system it's being run globally and the
25:39
people who control and run it don't identify with national sovereignty no and for them it
25:47
would be more beneficial to have a lot of small states instead of big unions
25:52
like the us or the European Union right if you've got satellite weapons then you're better off with with everybody
25:59
yeah you know pulling apart now here's the thing I don't think you you give up on governments cuz governments have been very useful for control you lever the
26:06
government up you put it in a debt trap and then you have the government you know coming up with these all these
26:13
rules and regulations that drive us crazy um if you talk to all the governments who've been saying no we
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won't sign the who treaty or no we want to pull out of the who what the government leaders will tell you is
26:24
we're in a debt trap and if we don't do what they say if we don't go into the who or we don't go along with this
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treaty you know we're going to lose the world bank's not going to roll over our debt or you know yeah the banks have got
26:37
us by the short hairs because we're in a Deb trap and that's what they've done to the United States you remember you've
26:43
got 34 trillion officially of debt I would argue much more you know unofficially but you've got how much
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much more do you think if you add up the like all the the black budgets over the past few years so we'll get into that in
26:55
a second let me finish this so so so you got 34 trillion of debt here's here's
27:01
what's important to understand there two things that are important to understand they could have issued $34 trillion of
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currency out of the treasury there is no reason we have 34 trillion of debt right
27:12
yeah treasury could have just issued greenbacks yeah now every time a president tries to get issue greenbacks
27:18
they get shot you know one of the reasons I live in Tennesse is Andrew Jackson tried and he got shot but he
27:24
took the bullet and lives he got the bank killed um but but we don't need to have 34
27:32
trillion it's a scam yeah um so that's number one and I can understand why you
27:37
know there benefits to the scam but I can but the other thing is if you look at the finances of the US Government
27:43
after they issue that 34 trillion and put the 34 trillion in the treasury 21 trillion that we can prove and even more
27:50
I would argue disappeared at the back door

Dec. 11, 2017

MSU scholars find $21 trillion in unauthorized government spending; Defense Department to conduct first-ever audit
Earlier this year, a Michigan State University economist, working with graduate students and a former government official, found $21 trillion in unauthorized spending in the departments of Defense and Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015.

The work of Mark Skidmore and his team, which included digging into government websites and repeated queries to U.S. agencies that went unanswered, coincided with the Office of Inspector General, at one point, disabling the links to all key documents showing the unsupported spending. (Luckily, the researchers downloaded and stored the documents.)

MONTHLY POST

Dancers at the End of Time, Part Three: A Mortal Splendor

November 13, 2019
John Michael Greer

Some of my critics like to insist that I never admit that I’m wrong. Those readers who have been following me for any length of time know that this isn’t true, but like so many of the fashionable distortions of our age, it points to a truth it doesn’t actually express. What offends those critics, of course, is that I refuse to accept the supposedly self-evident truth of whatever part of the conventional wisdom they defend most heatedly. The mere fact that the conventional wisdom of our time is so reliably wrong, and my predictions therefore turn out to be correct far more often than theirs, simply adds to the irritation.

Be that as it may, I’m going to start off this third and final part of our conversation about the flight from reason in our time by talking about a prediction of mine that was flat-out wrong. I made it repeatedly in my previous blog, The Archdruid Report, beginning in 2009 with a post titled “Strange Bright Banners.” In that post I spoke of the way that political discourse in the US has been twisted out of shape in order to avoid talking about the ways that American politics has been corrupted by economic interests to the point of absurdity, and the vast blind spot opened up by the misuse of the term “fascism” as rhetorical ammunition.

Back then the Obama administration was busy trying to deal with the fact that most Americans couldn’t afford health insurance by forcing them to buy it anyway, under penalty of law, at whatever prices the industry wanted to charge. Obama was loudly insisting that health costs would go down and consumers could keep the plans and doctors they had, and people hadn’t yet discovered the hard way that these statements of his were outright lies—though a lot of us already had well-justified suspicions. At the same time, everywhere outside the bubbles where the comfortable 20% or so of the population lived, working Americans were being driven deeper into poverty, misery, and despair by federal policies that actively encouraged the offshoring of working class jobs and the importation of millions of illegal immigrants who could be used, and of course were used, to drive down wages and benefits to Third World levels.

None of that was accidental. All those things were part of a bipartisan policy consensus that put the profits of big corporations and the convenience of the affluent middle and upper middle classes ahead of the survival of working Americans. Looking out at the political landscape at that time, I thought that the desperation of the tens of millions of people who were plunged into poverty and misery by policies like the one Obama was pushing would lead to an explosion: at the very least, a revitalization movement of the sort sketched out in last week’s post; more likely, the rise of a massive domestic insurgency based in the mountain West and the South; just possibly, if enough of the rank and file of the military sided with the insurgents, civil war.

I was wrong. The desperate working classes didn’t get a revitalization movement. Instead, they got a canny businessman named Donald Trump...