The current system is openly hostile to religion, and not-so-subtly hostile to family formation. Consume any sort of media and within 2 minutes the mockery of religion is plain to even the lowest of the low IQ. As for family formation:
– Women in the work force – [sarcasm] all women must have careers.
– Student loans – [sarcasm] all people must have college degrees.
Listen to me whine. One of the most difficult days of my life occurred shortly after I was married. My wife and I had enormous student loans. One day I found myself in the children’ aisle at the grocery store. I was curious about the price of diapers and such, and realized, “crap, I cannot afford a child.” It took us 10 years to pay-down the loans to get to a position where we could have children.
In the current system, a family has to be earned, and most people do not want to work to build a family.
The vast majority of humans are sheep and it is likely necessary to social functioning that they be sheep. They will follow a religion one way or another. They can follow a religion that provides them a larger metaphysical meaning and purpose with connection to the cosmos (Christianity) or they can follow a religion that reduces them to hollow economic units (Corporatism). It’s no surprise that the latter religion offers them little incentive to procreate. What’s the point of producing more hollow economic units?
To the extent that a person believes it to be true, a belief in the existence of a benevolent loving God, who watches over you and has your best interests in mind— and who is guaranteed to prevail in the end— will naturally tend to produce an optimistic frame of mind in the believer. This effect will happen, regardless of whether the particular religious beliefs are in fact true; what’s important is that the believer believes them to be true.
It stands to reason that a couple who believes that ‘God is in charge and good will triumph in the end’ will be more willing to bring children into the world, than will folks who are secular atheists, or who subscribe to modern ‘religions’ such as climate change; which envision the possibility of a more ominous final outcome, and see the future as uncertain and problematic at best.
Even in capitalist countries, fertility does remain high among those most religious: Traditional Catholics, Fundamentalist Protestants, Orthodox Jews, orthodox Eastern Orthodox, fanatical Muslims, the most religious Mormons. They keys are, first, convincing young women to get married, stay married and have a lot of babies; second, to convince young men to marry the women and stay married to them. Third, for a religious group to support these young families above all with reasons to live such a life no matter what.
Don’t underestimate, Z, the effect of “educating” women. Whenever a globalist wants to globalize a new victim, one of the first talking points is “female empowerment” and female education. Women busy on school and careers in their most fertile years will squander their youth, and become barren and bitter. A quick Google search will yield numerous articles about the inverse relationship between education level (generally that of the mother, as a dominant factor) and fertility rate.
Education, particularly the new college experience, makes a complete mockery of religion and morality. It is very, very hard to be religious or otherwise decent on a college campus, and that even goes for the nose, despite the best efforts of their elders. College outside of the STEM fields is an absurd Dionysian experience that leaves few unscathed, and has destroyed many lives.
It is the “western” elite, inimical to western people and religion in particular, which solves the puzzle. No characteristic of capitalism, communism, democracy, or oligarchy can be blamed for the neurosis of that ruling class.
http://www.amerika.org/politics/how-democracy-removes-culture/
Include other factors: Decline of family – Prosperity – Hedonism. Women’s education – Western elite
Great post, as the previous one. I think you have a part of the story. Capitalism makes obtaining money as the supreme value so it is in conflict with religious values. But democracy is also a very open system, where no opinion is better than another opinion, so we have to count to make a decision. Both go against religion.
In addition, as ConservativeFred says, it is not that the culture is open and, therefore, against religion (which is closed). It is that the culture is promoting an anti-religious ideology (liberalism), because this ideology is a tool to obtain power.