When survival was scarce, more births were essential for the propagation of the species. When food was scarce, more births helped families till more land to produce more food. When labour was scarce, more births were promoted to increase productivity. The dominant scarcity kept changing over ages, yet somehow high birth rates emerged as the only effective solution available to mankind.

So, ‘high birth rates are universally good’ is a mental model that has stayed with us over ages despite changing conditions. In the current context, this belief dates back to the post WW2 industrial growth spurt. The formula essentially was simple:

More young workers → more production → more taxes → support for retirees → more economic growth.

And we are still carrying the remnants of that formula, driving a deep-seated fear of declining birth rates.

Recently, India’s fertility rate fell below the replacement rate. The headlines called it a demographic challenge. Doomsday predictions resurfaced yet again. Even Elon Musk shared his concern for the country’s future. This is an example of how the world treats falling birth rates as a crisis of immense proportions — for the economies, societies, cultures and civilizations and eventually for the survival of the species.

What if, it is not?

What if that assumption has been inherited from a bygone era whose rules are no longer relevant?

World over birth rate is declining. Japan, South Korea and several highly industrialised, educated and developed countries are already knee deep in this decline. These countries are witnessing an ageing population with fewer younger people to support them in retirement. Yes, the consequences are real and visible on ground. But we tend to see just half the picture.

The keywords to be noted in the above are ‘highly industrialised, educated and developed countries.’ This is a highly desirable state for any country to be in today, despite the burdens projected for it tomorrow. These are all prosperous countries that have low mortality, better healthcare, high urbanisation, high levels of individual freedom. And they have reached this stage by doing the right things for their people over years. They are at an aspirational stage that most countries can only dream of.

There is a globally established correlation between declining birth rates and high prosperity. Then wouldn’t it be fair to celebrate it as an index of progress, rather than just fear the challenges of tomorrow?

Another important correlation is between a society’s prosperity and the level of agency its women enjoy. All these countries have high levels of female economic participation and agency in marriage and parenthood. These are societies that took their women along on the path to prosperity rather than just putting the onus of bearing more children on them. Yet another feat to be applauded. But it is disheartening to see how neo natalists misrepresent this statistic as – ‘Countries where women are empowered tend to have lower fertility rate.’ What’s wrong in this statement is that it puts the entire onus of declining birth rates on women, ignoring the prevailing conditions in which they operate.

Today, the prevailing constraints have changed world over. What was scarce then is abundant now. The dominant scarcity has shifted from survival to opportunity, status and mobility. This requires quality upbringing and education, enabling young people to leverage the limited career opportunities available and move up in life. And when we look at it in conjunction with the rising cost of education, healthcare, housing and lifestyle, the implications are significant.

First, having and raising children has become an expensive and high involvement commitment that not everyone can afford. Second, the highly competitive work environment usually means at least one parent has to step back, and usually it is the woman.

Throughout history children were seen as an asset. Now they have become a long-term investment. An investment fewer people are willing to commit to.

Conditions have changed, yet our assumptions remain the same. We continue to think low fertility is a crisis, based on outdated industrial-age assumptions and workforce models. We are quite blind to why it may be the opposite.

Two equations are rapidly changing today.

1. Labour – productivity equation – Technology has weakened the historical link between population size and economic output. Automation has replaced the need for numbers. What’s more, talent-skill gap and rapidly evolving technology have contributed to rising unemployment world over. Soon, a large young working-age unemployed population may be a bigger burden than the ageing pensioners for many countries.

2. Population – environmental capacity equation- For most of history, the equation was simple: resources exceeded our ability to harness them, so more people created more value. Today, technology is rapidly expanding our ability to produce while environmental constraints are becoming more visible. Population growth and economic growth increasingly impose environmental costs that earlier generations did not fully confront. Clean water, clean air, arable soil, forest cover; scarcity is changing form fast.

Fertility is not irreversible. It is dynamic. It adapts to incentives and conditions. And it can again in future. AI and technology may nullify old demographic assumptions by fuelling abundance. And then fertility could rise again.

So, here’s a provocation - What if declining fertility is humanity adapting to a changing form of scarcity?

What we are witnessing today is millions of individual childbearing decisions responding to the dominant scarcity of our times. Cumulatively helping humanity adapt for a future where being lean is a strength.

Think of that charismatic leader whose campaign promised utopia or that overconfident colleague who talked his way into a promotion despite having little substance, or that artist who has tremendous stage presence but very little art.

We prefer the appearance of competence over competence itself.

And unfortunately, this is a norm rather than an exception, an age-old phenomenon rather than a modern malady. Eons ago, Plato had warned against “Ignorance of ignorance”, a state where a people don’t know what they don’t know and mistakenly think they are wise. Ages later Dunning-Kruger confirmed that incompetent people overestimate their competence because they lack the ability to recognize their own deficiencies.

What’s worse, this malady afflicts both the chosen and the choosers. Those who overestimate their abilities and those who mistake that confidence for competence.

So where does that leave real Competence?

Competence could lose even more ground in this AI-powered age. Now, it not only has to battle hollow misplaced confidence, but also imposters empowered by universally available intelligent assistants and the growing ability to manipulate reality. In fact, it is gradually moving towards irrelevance in its current avatar.

It is time for competence to reinvent itself. To switch gears from being misrecognized to becoming an essential tool preventing misrecognition — Discernment.

Discernment is the pause the world needs today. A pause to critically evaluate, interpret, and judge what is being presented. The ability to tell good from right, fake performance from real depth, and ignorant certainty from wisdom. It is not loud like confidence. It is understated. It operates behind the scenes.

That really is the paradox of competence. It has always steered the world from behind the curtain and it will continue to do so even in the future, albeit now dressed as Discernment.

Various studies have by now established that our brain is inherently lazy, and not equipped to handle the cognitive overload caused by infinite sources of information, news, and social media it is bombarded with. Hence, the brain takes shortcuts. We now prefer to skim rather than analyse, scroll rather than understand, accept rather than research. And this has become a vicious cycle.

Well, we all know this. So why are we writing one more piece about it? Because none of the above ask the uncomfortable questions.

Have we been pointing blame at the easy targets?

Are we just looking at the niches and missing the larger picture?

Have we been asking the wrong questions?

The question is not whether social media and AI are driving the decline of thinking; the question is - Are these two the symptoms or the disease?

Human beings have always preferred cognitive ease over effort. It is not a new moral panic. It is a constant human trait. AI and social media are just being made the scapegoats.

We can test this argument in any chronology, macro to micro, past to present. The same human shortcut expresses itself differently across domains. Let us start with the macro and large-scale first.

Religion

From time immemorial, we have surrendered independent thinking to religious authorities. This is an ancient human pattern, and I am no outlier. Religion was born as a set of stories, rules and practices that satisfy basic human curiosity about our origin, how to live life and where we go after death.

Religion is just convenient. First, convenient for the leaders to bind populations together and make groups more manageable and malleable. Second, convenient for the brain to believe and comply. It is such a strong brain-numbing hook that it has forever been exploited for selfish motives. We are just witnessing this now at a larger scale and ferocity.

Politics & Leadership

The world over, democracies are becoming weaker, and polarisation is growing. People are surrendering logic and reason to political authority and rhetoric. And this is also not a new phenomenon. Wasn’t blind political obedience able to convince Nazis to commit the atrocities they did during WWII?

Human brain’s laziness is not only encouraged, but also exploited by the people in power.

Today, we see this amplified to another level, aided by modern tools that generate and propagate fake news, propaganda, and conspiracy theories. Again, AI here is just a tool being used to exploit our inherent weaknesses.

Media

Objective, well-researched, long-form, fact-based news has given way to sensationalism and entertainment in news media. Why? Because we incentivize such shallow, polarised journalism with our valuable attention, quick reaction and virality.

Often, independent journalism questions both sides and demands a deeper analysis of beliefs. So, what is convenient for our mind? Clicking and sharing entertaining news that supports existing beliefs, powered by algorithms that support confirmation bias. No wonder, independent media is being penalised and struggling to survive the world over.

Now, coming down to a few examples closer home.

Innovation

Tech brands are built on both innovation and lore. But brands like Apple have trumped that formula. With each successive launch in recent years, they have proven brand mythology sells even with minimal innovation.

Consumers choose familiarity, cognitive comfort and perceived value rather than deep evaluation of what is better and more innovative. The argument is not against Apple, but against the consumer behaviour that chooses lore over real substance.

Work & Corporate Culture

Modern work environment rewards compliance, speed, and predictability. Deep thinking is inefficient, slow, and destabilizing for organizations. Work today is more about following templates, processes, tools and playbooks rather than thinking. Thinking is unpredictable and unproductive work. The result - Mediocrity not just survives but thrives. Babblers rise in the system, while the real minds die out.

Across religion, politics, technology, brands, and work, the common theme we see is Cognitive Outsourcing. The human brain prefers to outsource thinking to systems, leaders, religious beliefs, brand lore and templates.

The human brain was always lazy. This is our permanent vulnerability. Modern economic, political, organizational, and cultural systems now reward, accelerate, and industrialize this vulnerability. AI, social media and the rise of technology are not the disease here. These are just the tools accelerating the decline of thinking at scale. These are the tools we are using to stay conveniently lazy.

Independent thinking is costly and hard. It was always inconvenient, but now it is often penalised.