Chessic Sense doesn’t seem to be coming out of left field. It certainly seems like you’ve been, at least at times, speaking of worries about cultural changes, and not just purely educational and economic worries:
And ChessicSense’s specific reference to phrasing such as “the demise of culture” is not just something he pulled from nowhere. It was in the first quote above, as well as your more recent
Individual cultures are dying, and it’s not the overly simplistic picture that’s being painted as though cultures always die every generation, simply not true, if it did then it wouldn’t be a culture. A culture is a culture because it lasts for multiple generations. Cultures die, whether its Chinese farmers moving to Shanghai or Austrians not breeding. Things are lost that cannot be replaced. It happens, but it isn’t just a process of morphing between generations. That’s a very deracinated way to view it.
I have no personal stake in the loss of Austrian culture, but then again as it would appear neither do Austrians.
If the people who live in Europe fifty years from now draw their cultural influences not just from the people who live there today, but also from people who live in the Middle East or Asia or Africa or wherever, what would be distress-worthy about that? If, in fact, it should even turn out that they draw their influences almost entirely from people who don’t live in Europe today, unlikely as it is, what would be distress-worthy about that?
Here in America, we don’t have flappers and speakeasies anymore, nor are bell-bottom jeans and disco music all the rage. Those aspects of culture have, in a sense, died out. Is there something distress-worthy in this?
So… If people are able to prevent having children by accident, they will then simply enjoy fucking and not have enough children. This will lead to a decline in the educated, Austrian population, which will therefore lead to economic collapse.
This argument is an old one, no different from the old 19th century “yellow hordes” argument which led to restrictions in oriental immigration.
Again
:rolleyes:
If you can only speak to me in stereotypes I consider my discussion with you concluded.
Nothing if the demise of Austrian culture is irrelevant to you.
America is not an example of anything regarding culture. Pop culture is not culture in the respect we are speaking, and American culture was founded on assimilation of immigrant populations, so it’s a poor example. To some the loss of culture that has occurred is indeed a tragedy. However, what you refer to is fashion trends, and not culture. Culture is biscuits and Gravy like your Mother made. It is relationships with venerable institutions. All you are doing is looking at the surface of things, largely because the liberal doctrine tells us that what lies beneath is only the stuff of bigots. People building lasting relationships with institutions like universities through alumni societies is nepotism. All tradition is considered evil and a form of bigotry.
But of course the freedom to role out of one girl’s bed in the dorm and walk down the hall to the bed in another girls dorm, THAT’S important. The imperative to enjoy is paramount. Being a part of something larger is irrelevant, passing on the legacy that was passed to you by your ancestors is irrelevant.
It’s not that people should be forced to conform or anything, it’s sad that they don’t value the life that was passed on to them enough to steward it for another generation. That is what is sad. It’s slow suicide, but who cares right? None of that matters to you so why should it matter to anyone else?
We Americans have wiped out more culture than practically anyone - not with guns, but with TV programs, movies, and records. I was on a cruise ship that got stuck on a shoal for a day on the Orinoco River in the middle of nowhere. Some Indians came to say hello - wearing Nike t-shirts. Immigrants naturally change culture. I see it in the Bay Area, and I’ve seen it my entire life.
However, there is one thing those worried about the demographic crash are missing. They remind me of those who tried to keep housing prices up. We can’t sustain continued population growth forever. Stopping it at any point is going to be painful in all sorts of ways, but a crash from lack of resources is going to be a lot worse. This guy no doubt regrets the use his invention has been put to, which I think is old cootism, but future generations may well give him lots of credit for saving the world.
This has been in handbasket-Cassandra territory from the start, but it’s getting particularly weird now…
Sure, I see it all the time too. And I agree television does do this.
I see it more as wistful romanticism, at least for my part. Maybe he will be credited with saving the world.
Well throughout history they thought it was important, not just in terms of preservation, but in terms of destroying your enemies. Why do you think the Soviet’s had Gulags in the far reaches of their empire? What do you think ‘re-education’ in the Great Leap Forward meant?
There’s all the difference in the world between lamenting coercive suppression and getting upset over the changes wrought naturally by time.
What I found interesting was the way in which the link in the OP appears to be a pretty effective litmus test for discovering various posters who are willing to run out and share their prejudices without actually addressing what was said.
There are people in Europe and the U.S. who are terrified that immigration will cause their countries to “lose” something.
There are racists who attack immigration on those grounds.
There are people who are worried that following generations will not face the same “character building” challenges that they faced, believing the
'younger generations" have it too easy.
Nothing in Djerassi’s comments actually supports any of these positions, (although there may be a hint of the third statement in his remarks).
Despite the hype in this thread over the use of the word “enjoy,” (which appears to be an English translation of some German word employed in a metaphor, making his “real” state of mind not quite determined), he does not actually say anything resembling “Get off my lawn.”
More importantly, the immediate criticisms of him as racist, a “defender” of Austrian “culture,” or even anti-immigration appear to be simply the projections of posters who wished to create a straw man of their own choosing to attack.
He made no comments about defending Austrian culture.
He made no comments about hordes of invaders.
His only remark about immigration appeared to be one supporting or encouraging it. Faced with a 1.4 birthrate and an aging population, he said that Austria needed to address immigration to maintain a younger population.
Whatever other Austrians may have said on the subject, attacks on him for being hostile to immigration or immigrants appear to be misguided and irrelevant.
Now, his remarks about the separation of intercourse from procreation very much sounds like statements issued by Popes Benedict, John Paul,and Paul over the last forty years and if someone wishes to dig up Djerassi’s actual remarks and take him to task for sounding too much like a spokesman for the Vatican, that would seem to be a legitimate response. However, the majority of the posts in this thread have scattered straw all up and down the forum.
I wasn’t BTW arguing that he was a defender of Austrian culture. Just to clarify. Only that he was lamenting that Austrians were not breeding.
I’m going to tell something. I’ve been brought up in a small village in a backward area of France during the 70s. Really backward, even by French rural backward standards in the 70s. And mostly populated by elderly people, because anybody young had left long ago. The rare adults left were small farmers, with a dozen cows, a field of potatoes, a couple fields of wheat, a pig to be slaughtered once a year, chickens and maybe a couple goats. I was brought up by my grand-mother and family was mostly great-uncles and aunts who remembered WWI, spoke Occitan and gathered around the fire place late at night, eating chestnuts. There was water at the faucet, but most people would rather drank what came from their well. Sunday meals were several hours-long affairs, with people showing up at odd times and discussing forever about the family history of third cousins once removed. When “old stuff” was mentioned, it referred to something that had happened during the 19th century. I could go on…
The culture I’ve been brought up in is gone. Completely gone. It makes me sad, sometimes, it makes me feel occasionally old, even though I’m not, because all my childhood references disappeared along with all the people I knew back then.That’s what my signature, that I rarely use, refers to.
I certainly relate with modern, urban French culture. I like it. I don’t like when some of its core elements are threatened or disappearing. But due to my particular circumstances, I’ve been highly aware from an early age that massive changes had already took place and that culture is, for its most part, transitory. On some aspects, I can relate more with recent immigrants coming from rural areas of a developing country than with fellow Frenchmen, and I often enjoy discussing with them about their life back there, longing from my own childhood memories. On other aspects of the modern world, I can relate more with some American nerds on this board than with my neighbours.
Yes, it’s comforting to be able to look at something and think : it’s been here, it has been done this way, we’ve eaten that for generations, centuries, millennia. And it’s sad to see the culture you’re accustomed to slowly fading under you eyes. Believe me, I understand that. But believing that you can fight the tide is an illusion. Yes, you can hold on some institutions, refer to traditions, but you’re deluding yourself if you think that the culture you’re living in has much to do with the culture of your great-grand fathers.
Villainous snake! How dare you call Baywatch a bane to culture!
The culture I live in is a completely deracinated atomized existance. I flew on jets from New York to Albuquerque, to see my parents, from Albuquerque to Nashville and then drove around Tennessee, Alabama and Florida visiting my wife’s family, then flew out of New Orleans after staying in a fancy hotel in the French Quarter.
Believe me, I know that my life has little to do with my family that came over in stage coaches to the four corners area of New Mexico and Colorado as pioneers, or my matrilineal side that came across the ocean from Poland and Lithuania around the turn of the century.
I have no personal stake in this. I am sufficiently uprooted.
[completely cheap shot at an entire nation] The greatest accomplishments of Austria was to convince the world Beethoven was Austrian and Hitler wasn’t. [/completely cheap shot at an entire nation] I’m unimpressed by the claims of some, perhaps ANY, old fart. Time has passed. His worldview is long gone. Time to buy some fried pastries from an Indian vendor, because they taste just as good.
Thanks, I think I’ll struggle through the disappointment. For someone who said
you sure do seem to be getting pretty excited about the upcoming demise of Austrian Culture.
The argument that contraception will lead to all sorts of social ills is indeed a very old one - its just not an argument that I find very rigorous.
And import Poles so the Baby Boomers who were too busy fucking without breeding still want to live their retirement on the dole. 
I think it should be said that it’s possible to be sad about the end of something without thinking it would be worth enforcing. I, for instance, find it horribly sad that swing music is no longer extremely popular. That’s because I like swing music. It’s not because I think rap is (objectively) bad, or that rappers are bad people, and I sure as hell don’t want the Swing Police to enforce listening to it. But I’m still sad that it’s gone. Does that make me a bigot? I don’t think so.
Whether or not Djerassi is saying it’s sad that Austrian culture is gone, this alone does not a bigot make. I don’t know the guy - maybe he does think it would be worth adjusting immigration rates to preserve it. But can we at least accept that sadness is not the same as bigotry?