What do you think?
Rate this book
The Past is a Future Country: The Coming Conservative Demographic Revolution
Since the 1960s, the West has moved ever-leftwards. 'Equality' and ‘feelings’ are central to the New Religion that rejects all traditional values. Yet beneath the institutionally dominant ‘Left’ stews a growing and restless ‘Right’. How has this fractured situation come about? What will the future hold? In The Past is a Future Country , the authors trace it back to the Industrial Revolution. Darwinian selection massively weakened, meaning that, for the first time in history, the selfish, sick and stupid could survive and reproduce, undermining our religious, group-oriented culture. Now the West is scourged by an epidemic of narcissists, competing to signal their individuality and moral superiority. But their ‘fight for equality’ is really a fight for self-promotion. Reflecting this runaway individualism, Westerners increasingly don’t have children, save for those who are genetically resistant to this onslaught ― the staunchly conservative and the eventual inheritors of the earth. But there is a dark storm brewing in the demographic data that the authors have analysed. There is a burgeoning growth in the population of exceptionally unintelligent and antisocial people that social welfare systems cannot sustain for much longer. The developed world will pass away, and the global population that depends on it will crash, in the greatest Malthusian Collapse of all time. Yet all is not lost. The authors show how a resistant class of intelligent, religious conservatives will band together to preserve enclaves of civilization that may survive most of the coming apocalypse, and from its ashes rebuild a new A Neo-Byzantium.
250 pages, Paperback
First published July 5, 2022
13 people are currently reading
203 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 22, 2022
Superb Summary of Cutting Edge Research
This is a wonderful and important book that condenses and summaries a vast amount of research within the field of evolutionary biology/psychology about where we are culturally, how we got here, and where we’re headed.
- Like that we’re at the peak of a long cycle of inevitably, inexorably increasing leftist cultural/political dominance based on valuing an individual’s ‘equity” and right to “safe space” at the expense of more balanced and sustainable traditional cultural values (within which have been the occasional short lived and largely ineffectual conservative corrections) which will eventually (likely sooner than later) crest and fall back into a Dark Age when a more lasting conservatism will emerge to salvage what can be of civilization. If this sounds farfetched consider checking your woke privilege and Judeo/Christian based assumptions of linear progress and just imagine life without electricity and computers (as we become too stupid to even maintain what we now have let alone innovate more) with 90% of humanity eventually dying off (after ballooning beyond sustainability) with the survivors forced to embrace the kind of lifestyle Quakers and Amish have been enjoying for centuries. -
The writing is lively and engaging and the result is often surprisingly refreshing (and counter intuitive). It’s unfortunate that it will appeal more to the right (pragmatic group-oriented ethnocentric crowd) than the left (idealistically woke self-centered individualists - which it is overtly critical of), because both sides need to hear it. That being said, while the content may appear controversial it should powerfully stimulate anyone who thinks about these things…
Beginning with an analysis of the basic differences between the cultural Left and Right – that the Left is basically self-centered while the Right is group-oriented, and that of the 5 moral foundations (care, fairness, loyalty to the in-group, authority and sanctity or purity) leftists score highly in the first two to the exclusion of the others, while rightists tend to score evenly in all five (which to leftists is proof the rightists are uncaring and totalitarian…), the authors then go on to outline how due to harsh evolutionary pressures (and softness in the absence of such pressures) civilizations progress through various stages of growth and decline which are thus natural and beyond the control of us mere mortals.
I’ve read a lot of Dutton’s books and I’d have to say this is perhaps my favorite (for a clear summation of his favorite themes), and a great place to begin.
“Consistent with the interpretation that there are fundamental differences between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’, it has been found that when conservatives feel cheated of a reward they feel that they deserve, then this elevates their feelings of hostility to other ethnic groups. They are group-oriented, so cheating them is cheating their group and that is what they care about. When liberals feel cheated in the same way, it elevates their feelings of hostility to members of their own group. Liberals are ‘individualists’ who are in constant competition with other members of their own ethnic group; conservatives are ‘tribalists’ who are in constant competition with other ethnic groups (Amd, 2020).” (p. 28)
“The collapse in child mortality, and relaxation of selection pressures generally speaking, permitted even greater genetic diversity to arise, something that further exacerbated declining trust. Declining religiousness also led to the rise in influence of females, and thus a greater emphasis on ‘equality’ and ‘harm avoidance’ over systematizing and truth, a coddling moral psychology that goes far in justifying restrictions on free speech in the name of protection from hurt feelings and grim realities. The entire situation led to an increasing evolutionary mismatch, higher levels of mental illness, greater paranoia, and thus, further overall declining trust, feeding into desires to restrict free speech in order to promote ‘safe-spaces’. Declining intelligence itself meant decreasing belief in democracy, declining trust, and increased dogmatism. Genetic diversity also permitted more and more depressed and individualistic people, who would be low on trust, and black-and-white in their thinking; pushing society away from beliefs in freedom of speech and democracy. With no group-selection pressure to keep society united, and with traditional religiousness being weak, these people could hijack the culture – due to the way in which group-oriented people sympathize with individualists – pushing it in an ever-more extreme individualistic direction, and so challenging democracy and freedom of speech, because individualistic values would need to be placed ahead of even truth.” (p.112)
“…. But unless our predictions should all sound rather “white-pilled”, remember: the coming ‘Silver Age’ in politics is to coincide with a monumental collapse, not seen since the Bronze Age three thousand years ago. The world will drift into an over-populated crisis of the very stupid and the very anti-social.
“This book will be a story of exile and abandonment in that context, not triumph and rejuvenation. There will be a ‘Great Escape’, whereby intelligent, conservative people flee apocalyptic chaos to establish refuges of civilization in which they weather the storm of the Dark Age. Those exiled will be conservative, middle class, and white (defined very broadly), set against ‘post-liberal’ areas of mixed ethnic minorities, with some white admixture. Today, the Woke will continue to induce guilt in the white or otherwise ‘privileged’ middle-class population, but tomorrow the underclass will be the frightening majority of the Western population, and too vast in size, and offensive in character, to sustain further sympathy. Lower IQ whites, reluctant or unable to move due to the associations between low IQ and conservatism and between high IQ and migration, will simply merge into the majority non-white populations; dissolving away into extinction like the Neanderthals.” (p. 14)
This is a wonderful and important book that condenses and summaries a vast amount of research within the field of evolutionary biology/psychology about where we are culturally, how we got here, and where we’re headed.
- Like that we’re at the peak of a long cycle of inevitably, inexorably increasing leftist cultural/political dominance based on valuing an individual’s ‘equity” and right to “safe space” at the expense of more balanced and sustainable traditional cultural values (within which have been the occasional short lived and largely ineffectual conservative corrections) which will eventually (likely sooner than later) crest and fall back into a Dark Age when a more lasting conservatism will emerge to salvage what can be of civilization. If this sounds farfetched consider checking your woke privilege and Judeo/Christian based assumptions of linear progress and just imagine life without electricity and computers (as we become too stupid to even maintain what we now have let alone innovate more) with 90% of humanity eventually dying off (after ballooning beyond sustainability) with the survivors forced to embrace the kind of lifestyle Quakers and Amish have been enjoying for centuries. -
The writing is lively and engaging and the result is often surprisingly refreshing (and counter intuitive). It’s unfortunate that it will appeal more to the right (pragmatic group-oriented ethnocentric crowd) than the left (idealistically woke self-centered individualists - which it is overtly critical of), because both sides need to hear it. That being said, while the content may appear controversial it should powerfully stimulate anyone who thinks about these things…
Beginning with an analysis of the basic differences between the cultural Left and Right – that the Left is basically self-centered while the Right is group-oriented, and that of the 5 moral foundations (care, fairness, loyalty to the in-group, authority and sanctity or purity) leftists score highly in the first two to the exclusion of the others, while rightists tend to score evenly in all five (which to leftists is proof the rightists are uncaring and totalitarian…), the authors then go on to outline how due to harsh evolutionary pressures (and softness in the absence of such pressures) civilizations progress through various stages of growth and decline which are thus natural and beyond the control of us mere mortals.
I’ve read a lot of Dutton’s books and I’d have to say this is perhaps my favorite (for a clear summation of his favorite themes), and a great place to begin.
“Consistent with the interpretation that there are fundamental differences between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’, it has been found that when conservatives feel cheated of a reward they feel that they deserve, then this elevates their feelings of hostility to other ethnic groups. They are group-oriented, so cheating them is cheating their group and that is what they care about. When liberals feel cheated in the same way, it elevates their feelings of hostility to members of their own group. Liberals are ‘individualists’ who are in constant competition with other members of their own ethnic group; conservatives are ‘tribalists’ who are in constant competition with other ethnic groups (Amd, 2020).” (p. 28)
“The collapse in child mortality, and relaxation of selection pressures generally speaking, permitted even greater genetic diversity to arise, something that further exacerbated declining trust. Declining religiousness also led to the rise in influence of females, and thus a greater emphasis on ‘equality’ and ‘harm avoidance’ over systematizing and truth, a coddling moral psychology that goes far in justifying restrictions on free speech in the name of protection from hurt feelings and grim realities. The entire situation led to an increasing evolutionary mismatch, higher levels of mental illness, greater paranoia, and thus, further overall declining trust, feeding into desires to restrict free speech in order to promote ‘safe-spaces’. Declining intelligence itself meant decreasing belief in democracy, declining trust, and increased dogmatism. Genetic diversity also permitted more and more depressed and individualistic people, who would be low on trust, and black-and-white in their thinking; pushing society away from beliefs in freedom of speech and democracy. With no group-selection pressure to keep society united, and with traditional religiousness being weak, these people could hijack the culture – due to the way in which group-oriented people sympathize with individualists – pushing it in an ever-more extreme individualistic direction, and so challenging democracy and freedom of speech, because individualistic values would need to be placed ahead of even truth.” (p.112)
“…. But unless our predictions should all sound rather “white-pilled”, remember: the coming ‘Silver Age’ in politics is to coincide with a monumental collapse, not seen since the Bronze Age three thousand years ago. The world will drift into an over-populated crisis of the very stupid and the very anti-social.
“This book will be a story of exile and abandonment in that context, not triumph and rejuvenation. There will be a ‘Great Escape’, whereby intelligent, conservative people flee apocalyptic chaos to establish refuges of civilization in which they weather the storm of the Dark Age. Those exiled will be conservative, middle class, and white (defined very broadly), set against ‘post-liberal’ areas of mixed ethnic minorities, with some white admixture. Today, the Woke will continue to induce guilt in the white or otherwise ‘privileged’ middle-class population, but tomorrow the underclass will be the frightening majority of the Western population, and too vast in size, and offensive in character, to sustain further sympathy. Lower IQ whites, reluctant or unable to move due to the associations between low IQ and conservatism and between high IQ and migration, will simply merge into the majority non-white populations; dissolving away into extinction like the Neanderthals.” (p. 14)
February 5, 2023
Superb Summary of Cutting Edge Research
This is a wonderful and important book that condenses and summaries a vast amount of research within the field of evolutionary biology/psychology about where we are culturally, how we got here, and where we’re headed.
- Like that we’re at the peak of a long cycle of inevitably, inexorably increasing leftist cultural/political dominance based on valuing an individual’s ‘equity” and right to “safe space” at the expense of more balanced and sustainable traditional cultural values (within which have been the occasional short lived and largely ineffectual conservative corrections) which will eventually (likely sooner than later) crest and fall back into a Dark Age when a more lasting conservatism will emerge to salvage what can be of civilization. If this sounds farfetched consider checking your woke privilege and Judeo/Christian based assumptions of linear progress and just imagine life without electricity and computers (as we become too stupid to even maintain what we now have let alone innovate more) with 90% of humanity eventually dying off (after ballooning beyond sustainability) with the survivors forced to embrace the kind of lifestyle Quakers and Amish have been enjoying for centuries. -
The writing is lively and engaging and the result is often surprisingly refreshing (and counter intuitive). It’s unfortunate that it will appeal more to the right (pragmatic group-oriented ethnocentric crowd) than the left (idealistically woke self-centered individualists - which it is overtly critical of), because both sides need to hear it. That being said, while the content may appear controversial it should powerfully stimulate anyone who thinks about these things…
Beginning with an analysis of the basic differences between the cultural Left and Right – that the Left is basically self-centered while the Right is group-oriented, and that of the 5 moral foundations (care, fairness, loyalty to the in-group, authority and sanctity or purity) leftists score highly in the first two to the exclusion of the others, while rightists tend to score evenly in all five (which to leftists is proof the rightists are uncaring and totalitarian…), the authors then go on to outline how due to harsh evolutionary pressures (and softness in the absence of such pressures) civilizations progress through various stages of growth and decline which are thus natural and beyond the control of us mere mortals.
I’ve read a lot of Dutton’s books and I’d have to say this is perhaps my favorite (for a clear summation of his favorite themes), and a great place to begin.
“Consistent with the interpretation that there are fundamental differences between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’, it has been found that when conservatives feel cheated of a reward they feel that they deserve, then this elevates their feelings of hostility to other ethnic groups. They are group-oriented, so cheating them is cheating their group and that is what they care about. When liberals feel cheated in the same way, it elevates their feelings of hostility to members of their own group. Liberals are ‘individualists’ who are in constant competition with other members of their own ethnic group; conservatives are ‘tribalists’ who are in constant competition with other ethnic groups (Amd, 2020).” (p. 28)
“The collapse in child mortality, and relaxation of selection pressures generally speaking, permitted even greater genetic diversity to arise, something that further exacerbated declining trust. Declining religiousness also led to the rise in influence of females, and thus a greater emphasis on ‘equality’ and ‘harm avoidance’ over systematizing and truth, a coddling moral psychology that goes far in justifying restrictions on free speech in the name of protection from hurt feelings and grim realities. The entire situation led to an increasing evolutionary mismatch, higher levels of mental illness, greater paranoia, and thus, further overall declining trust, feeding into desires to restrict free speech in order to promote ‘safe-spaces’. Declining intelligence itself meant decreasing belief in democracy, declining trust, and increased dogmatism. Genetic diversity also permitted more and more depressed and individualistic people, who would be low on trust, and black-and-white in their thinking; pushing society away from beliefs in freedom of speech and democracy. With no group-selection pressure to keep society united, and with traditional religiousness being weak, these people could hijack the culture – due to the way in which group-oriented people sympathize with individualists – pushing it in an ever-more extreme individualistic direction, and so challenging democracy and freedom of speech, because individualistic values would need to be placed ahead of even truth.” (p.112)
“…. But unless our predictions should all sound rather “white-pilled”, remember: the coming ‘Silver Age’ in politics is to coincide with a monumental collapse, not seen since the Bronze Age three thousand years ago. The world will drift into an over-populated crisis of the very stupid and the very anti-social.
“This book will be a story of exile and abandonment in that context, not triumph and rejuvenation. There will be a ‘Great Escape’, whereby intelligent, conservative people flee apocalyptic chaos to establish refuges of civilization in which they weather the storm of the Dark Age. Those exiled will be conservative, middle class, and white (defined very broadly), set against ‘post-liberal’ areas of mixed ethnic minorities, with some white admixture. Today, the Woke will continue to induce guilt in the white or otherwise ‘privileged’ middle-class population, but tomorrow the underclass will be the frightening majority of the Western population, and too vast in size, and offensive in character, to sustain further sympathy. Lower IQ whites, reluctant or unable to move due to the associations between low IQ and conservatism and between high IQ and migration, will simply merge into the majority non-white populations; dissolving away into extinction like the Neanderthals.” (p. 14)
This is a wonderful and important book that condenses and summaries a vast amount of research within the field of evolutionary biology/psychology about where we are culturally, how we got here, and where we’re headed.
- Like that we’re at the peak of a long cycle of inevitably, inexorably increasing leftist cultural/political dominance based on valuing an individual’s ‘equity” and right to “safe space” at the expense of more balanced and sustainable traditional cultural values (within which have been the occasional short lived and largely ineffectual conservative corrections) which will eventually (likely sooner than later) crest and fall back into a Dark Age when a more lasting conservatism will emerge to salvage what can be of civilization. If this sounds farfetched consider checking your woke privilege and Judeo/Christian based assumptions of linear progress and just imagine life without electricity and computers (as we become too stupid to even maintain what we now have let alone innovate more) with 90% of humanity eventually dying off (after ballooning beyond sustainability) with the survivors forced to embrace the kind of lifestyle Quakers and Amish have been enjoying for centuries. -
The writing is lively and engaging and the result is often surprisingly refreshing (and counter intuitive). It’s unfortunate that it will appeal more to the right (pragmatic group-oriented ethnocentric crowd) than the left (idealistically woke self-centered individualists - which it is overtly critical of), because both sides need to hear it. That being said, while the content may appear controversial it should powerfully stimulate anyone who thinks about these things…
Beginning with an analysis of the basic differences between the cultural Left and Right – that the Left is basically self-centered while the Right is group-oriented, and that of the 5 moral foundations (care, fairness, loyalty to the in-group, authority and sanctity or purity) leftists score highly in the first two to the exclusion of the others, while rightists tend to score evenly in all five (which to leftists is proof the rightists are uncaring and totalitarian…), the authors then go on to outline how due to harsh evolutionary pressures (and softness in the absence of such pressures) civilizations progress through various stages of growth and decline which are thus natural and beyond the control of us mere mortals.
I’ve read a lot of Dutton’s books and I’d have to say this is perhaps my favorite (for a clear summation of his favorite themes), and a great place to begin.
“Consistent with the interpretation that there are fundamental differences between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’, it has been found that when conservatives feel cheated of a reward they feel that they deserve, then this elevates their feelings of hostility to other ethnic groups. They are group-oriented, so cheating them is cheating their group and that is what they care about. When liberals feel cheated in the same way, it elevates their feelings of hostility to members of their own group. Liberals are ‘individualists’ who are in constant competition with other members of their own ethnic group; conservatives are ‘tribalists’ who are in constant competition with other ethnic groups (Amd, 2020).” (p. 28)
“The collapse in child mortality, and relaxation of selection pressures generally speaking, permitted even greater genetic diversity to arise, something that further exacerbated declining trust. Declining religiousness also led to the rise in influence of females, and thus a greater emphasis on ‘equality’ and ‘harm avoidance’ over systematizing and truth, a coddling moral psychology that goes far in justifying restrictions on free speech in the name of protection from hurt feelings and grim realities. The entire situation led to an increasing evolutionary mismatch, higher levels of mental illness, greater paranoia, and thus, further overall declining trust, feeding into desires to restrict free speech in order to promote ‘safe-spaces’. Declining intelligence itself meant decreasing belief in democracy, declining trust, and increased dogmatism. Genetic diversity also permitted more and more depressed and individualistic people, who would be low on trust, and black-and-white in their thinking; pushing society away from beliefs in freedom of speech and democracy. With no group-selection pressure to keep society united, and with traditional religiousness being weak, these people could hijack the culture – due to the way in which group-oriented people sympathize with individualists – pushing it in an ever-more extreme individualistic direction, and so challenging democracy and freedom of speech, because individualistic values would need to be placed ahead of even truth.” (p.112)
“…. But unless our predictions should all sound rather “white-pilled”, remember: the coming ‘Silver Age’ in politics is to coincide with a monumental collapse, not seen since the Bronze Age three thousand years ago. The world will drift into an over-populated crisis of the very stupid and the very anti-social.
“This book will be a story of exile and abandonment in that context, not triumph and rejuvenation. There will be a ‘Great Escape’, whereby intelligent, conservative people flee apocalyptic chaos to establish refuges of civilization in which they weather the storm of the Dark Age. Those exiled will be conservative, middle class, and white (defined very broadly), set against ‘post-liberal’ areas of mixed ethnic minorities, with some white admixture. Today, the Woke will continue to induce guilt in the white or otherwise ‘privileged’ middle-class population, but tomorrow the underclass will be the frightening majority of the Western population, and too vast in size, and offensive in character, to sustain further sympathy. Lower IQ whites, reluctant or unable to move due to the associations between low IQ and conservatism and between high IQ and migration, will simply merge into the majority non-white populations; dissolving away into extinction like the Neanderthals.” (p. 14)
October 25, 2024
This is a three-star book (because it is so repetitive) but it gets an extra star for being intellectually brave. (I have to assume this guy is canceled?) Really really really interesting ideas and predictions.
March 12, 2023
Lots of interesting stats and modelling but not much else. A bit too pessimistic for my liking too :0
August 7, 2023
If you've read one Dutton book, you've read them all.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews