Jim Penman argues declining birth rates signal broader societal collapse but may be reversible. Rat studies show mild food restriction improves maternal behavior and infant survival. He suggests similar treatments could increase people's desire for parenting and address short-term thinking problems like addiction and obesity.
I think it's part of the decline and general collapse of civilization. I think that's what's going on. As to preparing, what can you do? I don't think it's irreversible. And this is the point. I think we can do something about it because there are. We've done a lot of studies on rats, for example. And one of the interesting things is we're looking at the effects of mild food restriction, which is the opposite to what's happening in society. So instead of having over plentiful food, you mildly restrict food. And what you find when you do that is the mothers become a lot better at mothering. They actually spend more time with their infants, they build their nests better, they gather them back into the nest, they behave very, very differently. And in social environments you actually find that. In multi male environments you actually find that the infants have a higher survival rate because they're so much better looked after. Now what we want to do is to make available to people the treatments that can have the same effect on people, which will not only help people to want to have more children and enjoy having children, but will also help with things like drug addiction, alcoholism, obesity, a lot of other similar issues which are all based on short term thinking versus long term value.
Rising mental illness and falling birth rates have the same cause, it is this.....
