27 April 2022. Demographics | Art
The world is ageing. The economics are terrible, but it should be less violent. // Celebrating black women musicians at the Venice Bienniale.
Welcome to Just Two Things, which I try to publish daily, five days a week. Some links may also appear on my blog from time to time. Links to the main articles are in cross-heads as well as the story. Recent editions are archived and searchable on Wordpress.
1: The world is ageing. The economics are terrible, but it should be less violent
The journalist and writer Ed West has a piece in his newsletter, Wrong Side of History, on demographics. It’s a sort of a review of a book by Paul Morland that explores some of the implications of the dramatic deceleration we’re seeing in fertility levels in large parts of the world:
Across huge swathes of the planet, in an ‘infertile crescent’ from Spain to Singapore, the population is ageing quite rapidly, and about to begin a steep decline — a real life Children of Men... The upside is that — and this is admittedly a strange time to suggest it — the world is going to be a lot less violent.
The Children of Men was a dystopian novel set in 2021, written by the crime writer P.D.James. Its subject was a mass infertility—and humankind’s imminent extinction. Morland’s new book, Tomorrow’s People, doesn’t go that far, but it does chart what happens when societies age.
One of the things that happens is that they’re less likely to fight. Morland (I think, reading West’s piece) notes that at the start of the Spanish civil war, Spain’s median age was half what it is today. More recently, at the start of the Yugoslav civil war, the median age in Bosnia was less than 30–now it’s more than 40. When the Lebanese civil war started, the typical Lebanese would have had six siblings; now s/he is one of a pair.
‘While it cannot be said that youthfulness “causes” war,’ he writes, ‘or that maturity “causes” peace, a society’s age structure creates background conditions against which other things either do or don’t spark conflict.’ Like with a dry forest, conditions on the ground will determine whether a spark proves disastrous.
Although the relationship is not linear, the cycle that reduces fertility starts with a decline in mortality levels, especially infant mortality levels. They fall towards replacement levels, and then further, everywhere outside of sub-Saharan Africa. Most countries don’t spend long in the “Goldilocks zone” of replacement levels. Once they fall they don’t climb again, even when governments try to incentivise it. The result is ageing populations, again, everywhere outside of sub-Saharan Africa.
This means that some familiar (and ugly) tropes simply are not true. That racist fear of Europe somehow being overrun by Muslims with higher fertility levels from North Africa? Most North African countries already have moderate to low fertility levels:
Globally, this is all going to have quite grim economic consequences in the coming decades, with Japan the first country to go into ‘secular stagnation’. Morland talks of the trilemma facing ageing nations, whereby you can have two of the three: ethnic continuity, a thriving economy or a comfortable lifestyle without the huge stress of mixing child-raising and a modern economy. Israel has sacrificed the latter, Japan has chosen to take the economic hit, while Britain’s leaders have given up its ethnic continuity. But that, alas, was a short-term solution, since young immigrants don’t magically avoid the fate of Father Time any more than the rest of us do.
In Japan, more than a quarter of startups are now about care for the elderly. Much of the country’s tech innovation is also about elder care. Even so (and this is just arithmetic) more people live alone and die alone.
(Photo via pxhere, CC0)
And although not everything is about the war, West also notes that Russia’s precipitate population decline means that it has fewer young men to spare than ever before—one of the reasons why Russia has recruited in Syria and Ethiopia. 20,000 Russian villages have been abandoned in recent years, and 36,000 are down to their last few inhabitants.
If the Russians turn out to have no stomach for this fight, it will probably be for the simple fact that the country does not have enough men to spare. The majority of those poor young men killed for Russia’s honour will be their mother’s only son, in many cases their only child.
2: Celebrating black women musicians at the Venice Bienniale.
The British artist Sonia Boyce has won the Golden Lion at Venice Bienniale—with a multi-media installation about five black female musicians. She and American artist Simone Leigh, who won a Golden Lion for a huge statue, are the first black artists to win Golden Lions in the 127 year history of the exhibition.
(Sonia Boyce’s installation at the Venice Bienniale. Photo: British Council).
The Jury said that she raised “important questions of rehearsal”.
ArtNet News describes the installation like this:
Boyce’s pavilion opens with a four-channel video chronicling a recording session in the studio where Abbey Road was made. Musicians Jacqui Dankworth, Poppy Ajudha, Sofia Jernberg, Tanita Tikaram, and composer Errollyn Wallen experiment with sound and breath, seemingly in real time. The subsequent rooms focus on individual performers, creating an evolving, overlapping soundtrack as the audience moves through the space.
You get a feel for it in this short (two minute) video:
The British Council, which curated the British Pavilion for the Biennale, has this account of the piece:
The video works take centre stage among Boyce’s signature tessellating wallpapers and golden geometric structures, and the Pavilion’s rooms are filled with sounds – sometimes harmonious, sometimes clashing – embodying feelings of freedom, power and vulnerability. This new commission expands on Boyce’s Devotional Collection, built over more than two decades and spanning more than three centuries, which honours the substantial contribution of Black British female musicians to transnational culture.
As it happens, there’s a playlist on Spotify of Sonia Boyce’s Devotional Collection (which looks terrific, by the way).
Boyce herself described the question she was trying to answer like this:
After the ceremony, Boyce told Artnet News that her collaborators’ performances were born out of a simple question: “As a woman, as a Black person, what does freedom feel like? How can you imagine freedom?”
There’s a longer video (7’30”) about the work on the British Council if you want to go further into it, or have the time:
j2t#305
If you are enjoying Just Two Things, please do send it on to a friend or colleague.