[somenameforme]

I think societies somewhat naturally wax and wane on most topics, probably because it seems we're simply unable to maintain a middle ground on anything. We always end up taking things to an extreme which, regardless of what that extreme may be, tends to lead to unpleasant scenarios which causes society to start bouncing back in the opposite direction only to repeat the cycle in the equal but opposite direction some time later.

You can see this playing out in real time with religion which went from societies that were highly religious to secular to militantly anti-religious, and now gen-z is suddenly some ~400% more religious than previous generations. [1] The most interesting thing is that that's also a global trend, probably owing to the relative global homogenization of societies in many ways.

[1] - https://www.axios.com/2025/05/10/religious-young-people-chri...

[Adverblessly]

I can't speak to other countries, but here in Israel at least, religion is highly correlated with number of children.

Focusing on jewish women, fertility rates for different levels of religion in 2021-2023:

  Ultra-orthodox                6.48
  Religious                     3.74
  Traditional-religious         2.81
  Traditional, not so religious 2.20
  Not religious, secular        1.96

So naturally over time the religious portion of the population grows.

[Thorrez]

What's the difference between "Religious" and "Traditional-religious"?

Is "Traditional-religious" a strict subset of "Religious"? Is Ultra-orthodox a strict subset of "Traditional-religious"? If so, it's odd that Traditional-religious has lower fertility than Religious.

[somenameforme]

And this follows globally - fertility is one of the most interesting and critical issues of our time. It's going to change the future in ways most absolutely do not appreciate. On this topic most people see the world as inevitably becoming more secular because that's how society has trended during most of our lives, so it seems almost like a natural law. Yet even fertility alone means that society will almost certainly become substantially less secular over time.

This also has implications for the long-term population of Earth. The claim we'll reach a "max" population sometime this century is quite silly. It'll be a local max, not a global max. Because if even a single group maintains a positive fertility rate, that group will eventually drive the population to start increasing again (and basically take ownership of the gene pool while they're at it).

[mathgeek]

> It'll be a local max, not a global max.

There really isn’t any way to know this for a fact. The future could hold technology that allows us to expand far beyond the current population, but it also could lead to setbacks that the population never recovers from. It is reasonable to guess it’s a local max.

[somenameforme]

I think this argument would make more sense if it were external constraints that were driving a declining population. But the population is only decreasing because the majority group of people stopped having children. So they will remove themselves from the gene pool, the minority will become the majority, and away we'll go again.

As an interesting factoid the Roman Empire, which for many people of the time would have had some analogs to 'the world', also had a fertility collapse prior to its end, that they tried to combat with quite strict laws, but ones which were ultimately ineffectual. Of course that was hardly the end of the story!

[chongli]

That story is trying to paint this as a revival of Christianity but looking at the Pew report and the data paints a different picture.

Conservative Muslim countries show a pattern of overwhelming male dominance in religious service attendance. At the same time, over half of the Muslims in the US are recent immigrants [1]. This raises the question to me: is the resurgence in religious service attendance among men driven primarily by a broad return to the Christian church? Or is it largely an effect of the growing Muslim population in western countries?

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/04/14/muslims-in-a...

[somenameforme]

I'm not a huge fan of Axios, but chose to link to them for two reasons. (1) They leave their stories bullet pointed instead of feeding them into an LLM, or a human LLM, to add 5,000 words of fluff, and (2) they use extensive citations. Here [1], for instance, is a recent Pew study they linked to. All the studies have Christianity as the driver. And FWIW church itself is not a neutral term. Church => Christian, Mosque => Muslim, Synagogue => Jewish, etc. A neutral term would be 'attending religious services' or whatever.

The sex issue also seems to be just Axios' spin. By their own numbers it looks like church attendance is up 3x for women and 5x for men amongst Gen Z. Definitely a significant difference, but not really in line with their spin on the topic.

[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025...

[chongli]

I do appreciate their citations but the spin is a bit much. I’m still very skeptical about the interpretation of a “return to religiosity” rather than religious immigrants continuing their religious observances in their new home countries.

To show a proper “return to religious observance” (any religion, not just Christianity) means showing a large number of people who attend religious services regularly but whose parents do not.

[somenameforme]

I agree that immigration is probably playing a role, perhaps even a significant one, in these numbers, but at the same time this is also expected even without immigration. Religious families are having more children which means that, over time, there would be an inflection such that a generation starts becoming significantly more religious than the one prior - even if it's 100% because the children of that generation were born to religious families. Bringing over large numbers of religious immigrants is just speed running this endgame.

[chongli]

Yes perhaps I should not have focused on immigrants when the overall question I want to ask is if this effect is driven by religious subgroups/subcultures which include both immigrants from religious countries as well as people from religious communities within the US.

My hypothesis is that we’re not seeing much of a “return to religious observance” from children of parents with low/no religiosity and that nearly all of the resurgence is driven by the aforementioned religious subgroups.

[shafyy]

[flagged]

[jajko]

[flagged]

[shafyy]

I should have said "should have...", maybe this was not clear. I am not claiming tha there's a "perfect" country. Some countries come pretty close though, where you have affordable public transportation, affordable housing and affordable health care. For example and Germany and Switzerland (two countries where I have lived for long periods of time), nobody will die because they can't afford health care. Nobody will be homeless because they can't afford an apartment (yes, I know, there is also homelessness in these countries, but for a variety of other reasons).

Doe that mean it's perfect? No, of course not, there is always room for improvement.

[Thorrez]

Most communist countries haven't been such a utopia as you describe.

>He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, "there would be a revolution."

https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When...

[okasaki]

Cool story from an alcoholic traitor

> On 2 January 1992, Yeltsin, acting as his own prime minister, began a major economic and administrative reform ordered the liberalization of foreign trade, prices, and currency. At the same time, Yeltsin followed a policy of "macroeconomic stabilization", a harsh austerity regime designed to control inflation. Under Yeltsin's stabilization programme, interest rates were raised to extremely high levels to tighten money and restrict credit. To bring state spending and revenues into balance, Yeltsin raised new taxes heavily, cut back sharply on government subsidies to industry and construction, and made steep cuts to state welfare spending.

> In early 1992, prices skyrocketed throughout Russia, and a deep credit crunch shut down many industries and brought about a protracted depression. The reforms devastated the living standards of much of the population, especially the groups dependent on Soviet-era state subsidies and welfare programs.[108] Through the 1990s, Russia's GDP fell by 50%, vast sectors of the economy were wiped out, inequality and unemployment grew dramatically, whilst incomes fell. Hyperinflation, caused by the Central Bank of Russia's loose monetary policy, wiped out many people's personal savings, and tens of millions of Russians were plunged into poverty.[109][110]

[lupusreal]

Communism in Russia proved to be great at producing alcoholic traitors, because the material conditions and quality of life it produced was abysmal.

So yeah, people drank a lot and got the fuck out when they could.

[Thorrez]

If you know of a communist country that has had good civil rights and good prosperity, let me know.

[okasaki]

Could say the same thing about capitalism. Is it the US with a $7 minimum wage and bankrupt medical treatment? Is it the UK where the average salary is $37k and houses cost 500k, and a single train ride is 10% of monthly salary? Is it Germany where they arrest you for displaying a Palestinian flag?

[Thorrez]

I'm not saying capitalism is perfect. All I'm saying is that it's better than communism. This was the comment I was replying to:

>In political-left world, everybody has health care, access to housing and a liveable salary. In a political-right world, people are deported and killed, and the unlucky ones (i.e. the poor) live on the streets and can't afford to visit a doctor.

[shafyy]

I am not talking about communism. Nobody on today's political left spectrum of is seriously talking about communism. This is about socialism, or social capitalism.

[Thorrez]

36% of millennials in the US have a favorable view of communism. 35% for marxism. 50% for capitalism.

>Around one-in-five Millennials think society would be better off if all private property were abolished.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Finnggps7JDvgoylYYWc_onPtP...

[somenameforme]

I think this is an example of the creeping effect though. Socialism isn't some grand cure for things. There'd still be countless problems in society (and arguably even more than today) and so you'd have some people claiming then that the solution is to go even more leftward towards communism (as indeed some want to start with today) while others would be arguing for more privatization, as is again already happening in most/all countries with various large scale social programs.

The most fundamental problem we haven't isn't the system, but the people. It seems that all electoral systems are unable to avoid putting people in power that shouldn't be there. Look at basically every Western country and we all seem to be ruled by idiots who have no real vision for anything besides being in power. And so it's not exactly a shock that you get 'systemic' failures.

The same was true in the ancient empires with their dictators and emperors. During the time of enlightened and wise leadership they've have remarkable cities and justice that are inspiring even today. But then of course during times of power hungry hedonic idiots ruling, the societies would crumble and injustice would be ubiquitous. It was never about the system - it was always about the people. The goal should be to have a system that picks great people, but we seem yet to have discovered that. And indeed it may not exist. People that want to be in politics are the last people that should ever be allowed in politics, which poses quite the dilemma!

[potato3732842]

You know, for all their ills at least the historical communists meant well. Sure, some of them were pretty f-ing brutal but at least they tried to make their societies better, tried to make their countrymen richer and more prosperous.

The comparable people today telling us we have have to live under constant surveillance and be subjugated by all powerful governments and government intertwined institutions and organizations or otherwise losing all our rights and practical autonomy to various collective interests don't even do us the courtesy of pretending that the goal is to everything better and nicer. They just tell us that we'll all gaslight ourselves into liking the bugs or whatever and that despite everything being worse it's somehow better because stonks up and microplastics down, or whatever other metrics they also control.

[bpt3]

Who is this imaginary "historical communist" you mentioned?

You're claiming Mao killing millions with idiotic policies (not to mention all the scapegoats he killed intentionally) was okay because he was "trying"?

Or are you talking about Stalin, Lenin, or Castro?

Who is telling you that you "have to live under constant surveillance" and so on?

You'd rather have someone run the country into the ground while lying to you about than intentions (which you're gullible enough to believe apparently, for better or worse) than not?

I have no idea what is happening in our schools these days, but obviously something is lacking.

[esseph]

"Who is telling you that you "have to live under constant surveillance" and so on?"

I was born in the US, didn't have a choice!

[bpt3]

You think you live under constant surveillance in the US? While there might be more surveillance than you like, claiming there is constant surveillance everywhere in the nation (or anywhere really) is ridiculous.