Still Bullish on Generation Z

Hard tech in the Gundo, the Italian region with birth rate increases, marrying an older man and more in this week's roundup

My new book Life in the Negative World was reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, and by Michael Perrone, who offers an LDS perspective.

I also discussed the book on podcasts from First Things and Main & Gray.

In a bit of sad news, Stephen B. Clark, author of the landmark book Man and Woman in Christ, died on March 16th.

Bullish on Generation Z

In response to my take that I’m actually bullish on Gen Z, someone sent me this Tech Crunch piece about a Los Angeles area tech accelerator called Discipulus Ventures, which mentors young founders to revive a Norman Rockwell vision of America.

The mentorship program for young founders is interested in bringing together a rather idiosyncratic type of person, at least in tech: those with the idealism of Plato and the rationalism of Aristotle, with a strong drive to revive a Norman Rockwell–esque Americana.

And instead of building B2B SaaS companies, the cohort will all be working on problems related to hard tech, defense, or industry — what’s sometimes broadly called “American Dynamism.”

The program’s website is clear about this, with its call to student founders who have “a strict devotion to truth and goodness” and whose vision of the future combines “their entrepreneurship, personal virtue, and obligation to our country.” The emphasis on values stems from a conviction, held by the program’s three founders, that young people are not working on solving some of the hardest problems confronting the country — reshoring manufacturing or providing the electricity grid with plentiful clean energy — because their values are no longer pushing them toward mission-driven companies.

Again, there’s no guarantee that these folks will succeed, but they are positive, optimistic, and trying to build difficult things that will move our country forward.

Raising Birth Rates in Italy

The New York Times ran an interesting article about how a northern Italian region has managed to raise its birth rate.

Full houses have increasingly become history in Italy, which has one of the lowest birthrates in Europe and where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, as well as Pope Francis, has warned that Italians are in danger of disappearing. But the Alto Adige-South Tyrol area and its capital, Bolzano, more than any other part of the country, bucked the trend and emerged as a parallel procreation universe for Italy, with its birthrate holding steady over decades.

The reason, experts say, is that the provincial government has over time developed a thick network of family-friendly benefits, going far beyond the one-off bonuses for babies that the national government offers.

Parents enjoy discounted nursery schools, baby products, groceries, health care, energy bills, transportation, after-school activities and summer camps. The province supplements national allocations for children with hundreds of euros more per child and vaunts child-care programs, including one that certifies educators to turn their apartments into small nurseries.

…

Experts say the province’s sustained and reliable financial commitment to families matter more than the short-term baby bonuses that Italy’s unstable national governments have favored for decades.

“The difference is that it has a constant investment, over the years, unlike most national policies that are one-offs,” said Agnese Vitali, a demographer at the University of Trento. “Nobody plans to have children based on one-off policies.”

Note that Alto Adige is a heavily German region in Itlay.

Related in the Financial Times: Declining fertility rates will transform global economy

The study of 204 countries and territories forecasts 76 per cent will dip below population replacement rates by 2050 — a number that will rise to 97 per cent by 2100. The proportion of live births in low-income countries is projected to all but double from 18 per cent in 2021 to 35 per cent by the end of the century. Sub-Saharan African countries are forecast to account for half of global births by 2100.

Best of the Web

Jordan Peterson’s wife was officially received into the Catholic church over Easter. A Catholic TV network interviewed him about that and his own faith. Peterson is an Augustine who has not yet met his Ambrose.

BBC: Inside looksmaxxing, the extreme cosmetic social media trend

The Economist (via Hindustan Times): Why young men and women are drifting apart

Grazie Sophia Christie: The Case for Marrying an Older Man

Politico: Are Americans marrying enough? - An interview with Brad Wilcox

GQ: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross Have a Plan to Soundtrack Everything - “I couldn’t have predicted that there was a world where I would have a sizable family with kids and feel the level of fulfillment and comfort and be able to live in that.”

The Atlantic: The True Cost of the Churchgoing Bust

Ryan Burge: Are Members of the Clergy Miserable? - Apparently not as much as people think they are

Miles Herbert: I knew the facts about millennials but I wasn’t ready to admit the life my parents had would never be mine

New Content and Media Mentions

This week I got a mention from Heilelblog and at AEIR.

It’s not a mention per se, but Joel Carini wrote a piece about five reasons why Reinhold Niebuhr is still relevant. It’s a good supplement to my podcast with Joseph Hartman about Niebuhr.

My podcast this week was an interview with Peter Ostapko, who founded the very high quality Christian men’s magazine Kinsmen Journal. The design and print quality would feel very at home in a hip Berlin magazine store.

Paid subscribers can read the transcript.

You can subscribe to my podcast on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.

I also wrote a piece about the real function of third way rhetoric.