The decline of the industrialised countries

Singapore is suffering from a shortage of babies! Every year at least 50,000 babies have to be born to offset the small population of 3.4 million, but only 35,000 babies were born last year. The fertility rate has gone down below the critical level of 2.

1 per cent to 1.8. The coming generation would be short of human resources.

According to a survey carried out in Singapore, as reported in the press (December 6), family life is no longer an attraction, but it is social status and affluence, and personal freedom. Also there is a reported shortage of eligible grooms. Both men and women go out to work, a typical pattern noted in the developed countries. The home is no longer the centre or core of the society. What happens to a dynamic system without the nucleus?

On the other hand, in the third world, the birth rate follows the free flow of natural cause and effect. In Bangladesh, due to fertility of the soil (plenty of water and arable land), nature can support a huge population of 130 million in a mere 144,000 sq. km, with a density of over 900 persons per sq km, probably the highest in the world for the size of a nation.

Like politics, the life styles in the industrialised countries is also artificial and unscientific to some extent. Now jobs and services are being outsourced to developing countries at an increasing rate, as human resources decline, and wages go up. Confucius, the traditional wise man advocated that the strength of a society came basically from a strong family life. In fact, a couple of decades earlier, Singapore tried to popularise the Confucian philosophy, but it seems that it did not sell in the materialistic environment. UK and Japan, two other powerful island nations, are also in trouble, as the prosperity enters sunset years.

Now the super-power is trying pre-emptive strikes using military forces. It never worked in the history of human civilisation, but the misadventure continues. This philosophy is a mirage. Subjugate or convert?

It is time philosophy replaced some of the large overblown footprints of politics and economics.