It seems like the solution is advertising or propaganda. We've managed many lifestyle changes through that. We haven't really tried it either with any seriousness.
IMO the mistake you're making is in posing "theocracy vs. population decline" as the only two options in a zero-sum tradeoff.
My working hypothesis remains that the "uncanny valley" you're describing is caused by the modern lifestyle bundle creating what I'll dub a "false malabundance heuristic" that is inverting our k-selective reproduction instincts.
As a strongly social species, we measure ourselves against our peers, and with an eye towards those who are doing better than us. This is pretty easy to grok, no?
And as a k-selected species, we make reproductive choices based on our environment: even though pre-industrial society indeed had a high birth rate, that's just us as species that's been k-selective all up and down the primate tree (60-70 million of years of programming), temporarily deviating towards r-selection as an adaptation to both our environment (predators, agriculture, feudalist oppression, etc) and our high neoteny relative to other great ape species due to bipedalism (the last 2 million years out of 14 million total for great apes).
All of that is to say, now that we've removed all Malthusian constraints from the modern lifestyle bundle and invented liberalism, feminism, and Instagram... well, as a social species, the primary environment we key our k-selection to now is all of the billionaires and millionaires and totally-faking-it Instagram influencers who look like they're doing better than us.
This is causing us to k-select for entry into those classes, which means that we're investing enormous amounts of energy into smaller numbers of offspring than ever before, in the hopes that they can make it.
I surmise that if we can solve the cost disease, and more broadly create millionaire-and-billionaire levels of abundance, people will swing back to some sort of neutral equilibrium fertility rate, if not towards slightly more r-selection (as we see among the actual millionaires and billionaires!). If it barely costs anything to have children, and each child is now all but guaranteed to live that lifestyle, and -- for the women in particular -- you're not giving up any luxury or advancement by having children, then there's no reason not to keep having them.
I'll admit that it's possible this *actually* devolves into a sort of Maslovian Treadmill, where giving everyone millionaire-and-billionaire lifestyles just leaves them chasing trillionaires and quadrillionaires... but I haven't gamed that part out yet.
But basically, the primary conclusion is that we just need to solve the cost disease. No need to resort to the dubious case for theocracy, which you note has strong counterexamples in Iran and limiting principles to the Amish lifestyle (high loss rate).
Anyways, I'm no great Substack personality or anything, but I'd be happy to come on the show to discuss this theory some time!
It seems like the solution is advertising or propaganda. We've managed many lifestyle changes through that. We haven't really tried it either with any seriousness.
Propaganda, when sufficiently effective, is indistinguishable from religion. So you're not* escaping theocracy.
IMO the mistake you're making is in posing "theocracy vs. population decline" as the only two options in a zero-sum tradeoff.
My working hypothesis remains that the "uncanny valley" you're describing is caused by the modern lifestyle bundle creating what I'll dub a "false malabundance heuristic" that is inverting our k-selective reproduction instincts.
As a strongly social species, we measure ourselves against our peers, and with an eye towards those who are doing better than us. This is pretty easy to grok, no?
And as a k-selected species, we make reproductive choices based on our environment: even though pre-industrial society indeed had a high birth rate, that's just us as species that's been k-selective all up and down the primate tree (60-70 million of years of programming), temporarily deviating towards r-selection as an adaptation to both our environment (predators, agriculture, feudalist oppression, etc) and our high neoteny relative to other great ape species due to bipedalism (the last 2 million years out of 14 million total for great apes).
All of that is to say, now that we've removed all Malthusian constraints from the modern lifestyle bundle and invented liberalism, feminism, and Instagram... well, as a social species, the primary environment we key our k-selection to now is all of the billionaires and millionaires and totally-faking-it Instagram influencers who look like they're doing better than us.
This is causing us to k-select for entry into those classes, which means that we're investing enormous amounts of energy into smaller numbers of offspring than ever before, in the hopes that they can make it.
I surmise that if we can solve the cost disease, and more broadly create millionaire-and-billionaire levels of abundance, people will swing back to some sort of neutral equilibrium fertility rate, if not towards slightly more r-selection (as we see among the actual millionaires and billionaires!). If it barely costs anything to have children, and each child is now all but guaranteed to live that lifestyle, and -- for the women in particular -- you're not giving up any luxury or advancement by having children, then there's no reason not to keep having them.
I'll admit that it's possible this *actually* devolves into a sort of Maslovian Treadmill, where giving everyone millionaire-and-billionaire lifestyles just leaves them chasing trillionaires and quadrillionaires... but I haven't gamed that part out yet.
But basically, the primary conclusion is that we just need to solve the cost disease. No need to resort to the dubious case for theocracy, which you note has strong counterexamples in Iran and limiting principles to the Amish lifestyle (high loss rate).
Anyways, I'm no great Substack personality or anything, but I'd be happy to come on the show to discuss this theory some time!
I think the problem of disease and wealth is more complicated than the problem of birth rates and religion.