• Articles - Cinema - Featured - Psychology - Women

    The Birth Rate Crisis: There’s something about Modernity

    January 24, 2024 - By 

    Perfect Days

    “Perfect Days”, Wim Wenders’ latest movie set in Tokyo, is a very poetic, minimalistic film about finding joy in the simple things of life. (I am usually not a great fan of Wenders, but this is a good one).

    In the film, the main character works as a public toilet cleaner, although his education level seems to be relatively high. He’s an avid reader (Faulkner, Highsmith), an amateur photographer, and he enjoys listening to alternative American music from the 1960s and 1970s (Nina Simone, Lou Reed and The Kinks are the main hits of the soundtrack that he plays from cassette tapes in his car while driving to work). Excepting one Japanese song and at least one Japanese book, most books and songs shown in the film are by Americans, so this looks like a demonstration of how Americanized Japan has become, although that might be a generational thing: it represents the Japanese who came of age in the 1960s/1970s, of which writer Haruki Murakami might be another example. (Today, it’s in large part the American youth who watches Japanese animes and gets “Japanized”.)

    The main character is a single man in his 50s living alone in Tokyo. He has no children and apparently has never married, although the film implies he had some form of relationship with a woman years ago. His only family connections seem to be a sister and a niece he rarely sees.

    The film is not really about the appalling birth rates in Japan, nor about the increasing loneliness in modern Japanese cities. But characters like the one in the movie, once an exception, must be very common now. A recent survey informs us that “More than one-third of unmarried Japanese adults in their 20s to 40s have never been in a relationship and one-fourth have no intention of ever getting married.”

    It’s no wonder that Japan has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world.

    Why don’t Japanese people want to marry? For men, the alleged main cause was “the financial strain of married life”. For women, “they do not want to compromise their freedom and independence.”

    Freedom and independence, eh? How’s that working out for women, though? Most women appear to be increasingly unhappier than they were decades ago. In the following article from a left-leaning site, they call it a “paradox” and say that it is “strange”:

    Something strange is going on in women’s happiness research. Because despite having more freedom and employment opportunities than ever before, women have higher levels of anxiety and more mental health challenges, such as depression, anger, loneliness and more restless sleep. And these results are seen across many countries and different age groups.

    But who says it is a paradox? Isn’t it more likely that “freedom and employment” don’t lead to happiness, and that marriage and babies, while no guarantee of “happiness” either, at least give a more concrete sense of long-term satisfaction?

    As a fan of Ozu movies, I make a case that Japan should just go back to arranged or semi-arranged marriages. (By the way, in Ozu’s “Late Spring” there’s a good speech by the father about marriage.)

    Not just the Japs

    Japan may be an extreme case, with its young men “marrying” holograms or anime characters. But neighbouring South Korea has an even lower birth rate — and Asia is far from alone in that trend. In fact, most of the world, excepting perhaps Africa and India, is on a downward population trend. All Western countries right now, and many non-Western too, have below-replacement birth rates. Some, such as Germany or Italy, are dangerously close to the levels of Japan and South Korea.

    And recently even France, which for years used to be an exception with more robust birth rates — although that might have been caused by the influx of foreign migrants that the French government doesn’t like to count in its statistics — now had a “baby bust” with the lowest number of births since World War II.

    But why?

    There are lots of reasons, of course. Some are biological — micro-plastics, whatever they put in our food and water, vaccines. Some are economic — higher living costs and uncertainty about the future. Some are social — feminism, urbanization, loss of religion.

    The biological and economic causes warrant some investigation, but I’d say that the social causes are the most important ones.

    The loss of religion by itself seems to he a huge part of it. The groups with higher birth rates tend to be the most religious ones: the Amish, traditional Catholics, practising Muslims, Orthodox Jews. Having and taking care of several children is not easy. The idea of having a higher purpose in life beyond personal happiness certainly helps, as this memorable dialog from Tarkovsky’s “Nostalghia” reminds us: “I know, you want to be happy. But there are more important things.”

    Several years ago, I did a short documentary that no-one watched about exactly that issue. It was called “Childless in Europe” and you can watch it below.

    And Feminism?

    Feminism didn’t help either. Women, in the end, are the ones who decide if they will have children or not. And most are deciding not to, either because they prefer to focus on their career and marry later, or because they decide that having children interfere with their search for happiness, or because they consider marriage a form of prison, or… Who knows? Fact is, wherever feminism flourishes, the birth rate goes down.

    On top of that, there is a growing dissatisfaction between the sexes. Men and women no longer seem to understand each other. Many Western women, in particular, seem to have become totally unaware of what men want, and even of what they themselves want. A viral video recently showed a typical modern young Western woman saying that she “doesn’t cook, doesn’t clean, and doesn’t bring anything to the table in a relationship except her looks and personality”. Many such cases. Sad.

    Of course the men’s reaction is not much better, divided into either virgin MGTOWs or chad PUAs — both awful lifestyles that do not lead to higher birth rates, but rather increase even more the problem. Sexual liberation ends up being bad for both sexes.

    (This is not even new, as J. D. Unwin’s “Sex and Culture”, published in 1934, observed that sexual liberation and the end of strict monogamy always led to cultural decay).

    The role of digital technology

    Technology, and in particular digital technology in the form of social media and smartphones in general, might also be a factor.

    I don’t know the exact mechanism, but it seems that the more we live in the digital world, the less we want to interact with real people in real life. Some people even prefer to have “AI girlfriends” and pay for them.

    Autism is growing (although that could also be an effect of vaccines). Many young people no longer know how to communicate face to face.

    We have evolved into a society that talks a lot about sex, and inflicts graphic images of sex even on teenagers and children, but more and more it seems to be just images and talking. Narcissistic posturing. The more people talk or fantasize about sex and about their “sexual identity”, the less they seem to actually have sex, much less procreative sex.

    Many young people seem to make themselves ugly on purpose, consciously or subconsciously, with tattoos, blue hair, pink hair, piercings, nose rings. It might be a subtle, or perhaps not so subtle, way of avoiding sexual interest from others and further social interaction. Safer to interact just from behind a screen.

    Even prostitution has receded mostly to cams, nudes and other interactions at a distance. OnlyFans is the new brothel. Phones are the new bed. Everything is virtual.

    If it goes on like that, a few European ethnicities could disappear in the not too distant future, either by mixing into the general globalized gene pool or simply by failing to reproduce in enough numbers.

    No children.

    Is there hope?

    If there is, it lies in the young Catholic converts I saw singing in the Latin Mass in Finland. In the young woman in Spain kneeling in front of the crucifix during a Corpus Christi procession. In the young woman in Leipzig playing the piano at church. They are the future, whether they know it or not.

    And not necessarily because they are better or more moral than their blue-haired brethren, but simply because the blue-haired, tattooed, pierced folks will likely have zero or few children — if they even marry at all, I mean someone of their own sex — while those Catholic young men and women are more likely to form large families one day.

    But, more importantly, even if they don’t have any children themselves, they are establishing the foundations of a more stable society based on stable, time-tested values. Blue-haired, pierced, socially atomized individuals who marry holograms or anime characters don’t lead to any kind of society that can last.

    Latin Mass.

     

  • Articles - Book Reviews - Women

    On Elena Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend”

    October 14, 2020 - By 

    It took me a while to start reading this book, or rather, this series of four books also called “the Neapolitan tetralogy”. I had heard about it the first time around 2009, of course, when it became a surprising best-seller all over the world. But I was a bit suspicious of it, maybe even a bit prejudiced. First, because it was a “best-seller”, and second because it was written by a woman. Not because I don’t like women writers in general, but because the themes that they tend to be more interested in (love, relationships, female psychology) tend to interest me less than other themes…

    But I was, of course, wrong. The books are actually very well-written and engaging, what one would call “page-turners”. They might even a bit soap operish, but in a good way: lots of drama and surprising twists, and usually very easy to read.

    One possible problem of the book, although I am not sure if it is necessarily a problem, is that the character of the friend, Lila or Lina, is (for me, at least) so much more interesting than that of the narrator and protagonist. But during a lot of the time the story focuses more on “Elena” and her mundane problems with her family, her lovers, her writing career, etc, while Lina sort of disappears into the background.

    Also Elena, contrary to Lina, does not seem to be the type of character that is always particularly very perceptive about her own reality: she is convinced that she’s a “good mother” when she takes extremely dubious decisions, or is sure that her relationships are “going well” when the opposite is quite clear.

    Of course, as the story progresses, one feels more and more (and especially in the last part) that Lina, more than just a character, works really more as a sort of “dark alter ego” of the author, or as a symbol related to the city of Naples, an unstoppable force that somehow embodies the energies of the city.

    And Naples, or more specifically its poor periphery (an unnamed “rione” or neighbourhood) where the two friends grew up is perhaps the main “character” of the series. Even if the protagonist Elena also wanders through Pisa, Rome, Florence and other parts of the world, the focus is always in the “rione”, which Lina never leaves.

    The Naples that the story shows is a quite violent and sometimes very depressing environment. It is very different from what you may read or see in Eduardo de Filippo’s Neapolitan plays, for example. De Filippo also shows poverty, drama and occasionally violence, but he is almost always humorous and focuses more on the humanity of the characters, even when they are poor or desperate or make bad decisions. But Elena’s Neapolitans almost totally lack humor, and most characters, even when “friends”, have very harsh or complicated relationships with one another. There is not one family relationship or friendship in the book that seems to work even remotely well; everybody seem to be constantly fighting or trying to get their way with each other, or changing from friend to enemy on a whim; even Lina’s and Elena’s “friendship” is full of misunderstandings and aggressions.

    Another observation: even though the book constantly mentions the “Neapolitan dialect”, it has very little of it. It mostly uses the standard Italian language for all of the dialogs (I’ve read the book in Italian; this wouldn’t apply to the translation), and maybe just a few local expressions (‘zoccola’ or slut is one that appears quite often). Now, if you’re even just a bit familiar with the Neapolitan dialect, you can see that it can be very colourful and characteristic, even if it can become impossible to understand, even for Italians (for an example, check the aforementioned plays by Eduardo De Fiippo, or the work of Neapolitan actor/director Massimo Troisi.) So while I understand why the author chose not to use it, sometimes it seems that it could give more life to the speech of at least some of the characters, who wouldn’t speak in formal Italian anyway. I don’t know; it’s a minor thing, and does not compromise the book.

    I could go on, but I don’t want to give any spoilers. If you have the chance, read the book, it’s worth it. There is also a recent series based on it, but I didn’t watch it, and don’t plan to (I have my own image of the characters and I feel that the visuals chosen for the series might ruin it).

    P. S. “Elena Ferrante” (not to be confused with “Elena Greco” which is the character of the book) is a pseudonym, and it is not clear who the real author is, as she has not come forward officially. Some say that she is actually the translator Anita Raja, which could or could not be true. Does it matter? Does it change the book in any way? I don’t think so. She has a new book now that just came out, not related to the tetralogy (“La vita bugiarda degli adulti”); I haven’t read it and not sure I will.

  • Books - Women

    Books for girls, books for boys

    July 12, 2020 - By 

    I watched the other day the latest version of “Little Women”, by Greta Gerwig (2019). A fine directorial effort, very nice photography, but I just could not concentrate very much on the plot, had some difficulty getting which girl was which, and the wine I was drinking at the time didn’t help. I guess that, if there is a story that was created specifically for females, it has to be “Little Women”.

    Nothing against it, of course. It’s just that it feels like when you’re a boy and you’re watching a pirate movie and then there is some kind of boring kiss scene and romantic drama and you just want it to end and get back to sword-fighting and shipwrecking. Well, here there’s only romantic drama.

    Now I admit, I never really liked romantic comedies in cinema. And in literature, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, well, they are good writers, for sure, but their themes are so “for women”, that I just never had too much interest.

    On the other hand, I love Emily Dickinson, Wisława Szymborska and many female poets. Novelists, I’ve read with pleasure Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton, among others. And Flannery O’Connor is a genius short story writer, better than most men. So it’s not a question of women being or not being good at writing, but really about the themes of the stories they choose to tell, which in many cases tend to be about love/relationships/being a female and are thus more appreciated by women.

    Is there a similar case of books “for boys”? Well, I suppose that science fiction and adventure books (Jack London, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, etc.) are in general more interesting for men/boys, but there are some women who like them too. Many non-fiction themes (history, politics, science, war) are also heavily preferred by men, but I suppose there are some women who are history or science buffs.

    Yet the opposite almost never seems to happen: it is rare for men to be interested in explicitly romantic novels. How many men have read “Fifty Shades of Grey?”

    But then again, it might be just a case of personal preference. There are some great books written by women that are wonderful for both boys and girls, and I might compile a list one day.