Human society is very old. The continents, as we know them, were in place for millions of years before any creature resembling a human set foot upon them. One doesn’t have to be an atheist to understand that humans change and evolve, passing through distinct stages over time. We’ve gone from tribal, to agricultural, to pre-modern, to modern, to post-modern, more or less.
The Bible was written during an agricultural age. Its stories revolve around empires and estates, where value was measured in land, grain, wives, and children. By then, humanity had already moved beyond the hunter-gatherer stage—and we’ve since passed through many more.
The biblical era reflects a time when human life had grown complex enough to require laws. Societies depended on natural forces like weather, and people began to speculate about the powers behind them. The idea of gods gave structure to a chaotic world. Randomness has never been a satisfying answer for human suffering or success. It wasn't then, and it isn’t now. Consider the story of Abraham and Sarah, where the longing for children was bound up with divine purpose. God’s greatest gift wasn’t more stuff; it was a child.
For centuries under agrarian rule, most people lived much like their parents, and so being a child and having a child was closely linked. Everyone worked, scraped by, and hoped for good weather. Children were not only a blessing but a necessity. They provided safety, labor, and community. In the absence of modern markets or money, help came from family—those members of your tribe that you could depend on. You went to war with them.
But human ingenuity did not sit still. Surpluses of food and the advent of language—first spoken, then written—enabled learning. The great Polis, the City, arose where geography allowed. Cities flourished in river valleys and coastal plains, wherever nature lent a hand. In the city, learning proliferated. Trade in ideas, not goods, came to pass. People liked it, and still do. The migration to the cities started long ago continues around the world. Only the most reactionary true to empty the cities and forcibly return to the land.
After the city came the machines. Technology enabled greater food production with less labor. Factories replaced farms. Clothes once made by hand were now mass-produced. The family farm shrank—and shrank again—and people poured into the cities.
The Industrial Disruption
Advances in technology meant food could be produced with less labor, and in time, factories replaced farms. Handmade goods became mass-produced. The family farm shrank, the industrial farm grew.
Also, hygiene improved. Fewer children died. Hospitals emerged. Vaccines spread. Then came contraception, and eventually abortion. Parenthood became a choice, not a fate, and made the human future a human choice.
Now, humanity stands at a moment as transformative as the agricultural revolution. For the first time, we are asking—not rhetorically, but seriously—Do we want children at all?
And if the answer is no, then we may already be living in the final generations.
It sounds extreme, but it isn’t. Everywhere industrialization has taken root—and that is almost everywhere—birth rates are falling. The population surge of the 19th and 20th centuries wasn’t driven by more babies; it was driven by longer lives. Think that through: life extension, not fertility, grew the numbers. But that trend has run its course. Today, birth rates in many countries have fallen below replacement levels.
If women could reliably have children later in life, this might not feel so ominous. Older parents are more stable, often wealthier, and they tend to have children because they want them. But modern society, which invented adolescence and stretched youth into the twenties, also made early motherhood taboo. Telling a 17-year-old to get pregnant is scandalous—and in many cases, illegal. And yet, biologically, the window from 15 to 30 is when women are most fertile. That’s how evolution, or nature, or God, designed it. The design now collides with the incentives and structures of modern life. And we are nearing the end of the grace period.
So we face a hard question: Was industrial society always destined to end here? Was the Polis—with its art, learning, cuisine, nightlife—a brief, radiant flare across the human timeline, doomed to last only a few generations? If the answer is yes, then we are entering a long descent. No children means no future workforce. No one to staff hospitals, or police forces. No one to defend the rule of law. Already, abandoned towns litter the maps of Japan, Spain, and Italy. People retreat into the cities, which only worsens the trend.
Much could happen before the final curtain. New technologies allow older adults to bear children. Wealthy elites pay others to carry babies. Baby markets might emerge, or rampant baby theft. Or surrogacy systems that veer toward slavery—as in The Handmaid’s Tale. All of these, in some form, are already with us. The pressures will only intensify as the shortage of children becomes impossible to ignore.
If industrial society was always fated to reach this juncture, then the next stage may be just as inevitable. Humanity will level off, I suspect, and find a new equilibrium. But it will be in a smaller, more shrunken world—one that may need centuries to expand again.
Two decades ago, I started reading about shrinking societies. At first, the stories were strange but amusing—like elderly Japanese carrying baby dolls as substitutes for grandchildren. It seemed eccentric. But then came reports from Europe: falling birth rates across the board. Why? Most analysts cited the changing role of women. And they’re not wrong.
But what if there’s a deeper truth? What if the decline of fertility—even in traditional cultures—isn’t just about women’s rights or economic pressure? What if it’s a structural consequence of leaving the agrarian world behind? If so, no campaign or policy will bring back the old love of children and family. If the modern city is a trap—beautiful, seductive, and ultimately sterile—then decline is already baked into the cake.
I thank God every day for my children, and spend much of my mental energy contemplating the original impulses that make up a meaningful life. Most of these thoughts are graphically pre-modern. Another possibility of the decline of people is a decent into pre-modern warfare. The declines of the past, the ones driven by wars or pestilence, were not peaceful periods. People often declare they would die for their children, and if they have none, they might be more willing to kill everyone else’s.