Children of Men, in real life: Japan's shrinking population

If you've seen the movie, you know the premise. But it's not that farfetched, as the media is starting to notice. This article chronicles Japan's slow-motion demographic catastrophe: fewer and fewer children being born, resulting rather unsurprisingly in an overall population that is beginning to shrink.

I'm not philosophically in sync with Whitney Houston on many things, but in this case she's right: children are the future of any society - as well as a blessing and a heritage from the Lord. Any society that devalues them invokes His curse -- destroying itself, as these numbers make clear. And please understand that I'm not going after Japan particularly, merely the whole Western obsession with self, of which Japanese society is merely one example.

(h/t Susan)