With all the problems on this benighted ball, it seems to me that the paramount issue receives very short shrift, both in the popular media and in the hallowed halls of intelligent debate: The excessive population of human beings on our planet Earth.
Is this not really the root of all evils?: pressures for resources causing social tensions and violence; global climate change caused by the increase in human resource consumption and the constant ratcheting up of industry to supply it; the sufferings of other animal species due to ever expanding human exploitation of the natural world. What can be done by governments to turn this around? Can anything be done by democracies? The West nags China about human rights, but it seems clear that no Western democracy could ever get away with legislated limits on reproduction. Yet perhaps that is what is needed.
China, of course, already has the “one child” policy, but from what we hear it is more honoured in the breach… Is there an answer, or are we all just to embrace Schopenhauer? He may have smiled at a bumper sticker I saw recently. It said, “Save the Planet - Commit Suicide.”
Population is not the problem. Distribution of resources is. Malthus, the originator of Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” idea, was bleak for a reverend. His ideas amount to more of the same religious tripe that finds this world doomed from the onset. This is yet another example of a person having faith in some god at the expense of the people that god supposedly created. Malthus was revisited 30 years or so ago by Paul Erlich of the Sierra Club in his book, “The Population Bomb”. Doomsday “science” is really not science where possibilty excludes determinism. Science is not the savior. Morality is.
“Science is not the savior.”
Science is the savior. It has developed the techniques, technologies and alternatives to overcome shortages. Malthus would have been right in his prediction of the world running out of food if humans and science had not developed better agricultural techniques.
Though we do use an inordinate amount of energy, science has made our use more efficient and thus added to our sustainability.
It wasn’t Darwin that came up with the idea of the “survival of the fittest”. It was Herbert Spencer, a disciple of Darwin. Anyway, there seems to be no connection between what Malthus believed and Spencer thought.
who needs a savior?
we need more wars…
-Imp
Impenitent, any oppertunity to sell your stuff, aye.
aye, science gives us better weapons…
god gives us the drive to exterminate the ungodly…
history never repeats…
-Imp
Population control is rarely discussed. Individual freedom is the supposed reigning priority here. So called free enterprise trumps equitable distribution of resources. Foreign aide is tied to “national interest.” I suppose the spineless politicians of both major parties would consider a push for population control political suicide.
The best sources of Darwin’s idea point to its genesis in the ideas of Malthus. Even Darwin admits that it was by reading Malthus that he arrived at his concept. It did not come from any Darwinian desciple, especially one who was as out to lunch as Spencer.
Ierrellus, check this out:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest
You are right, though, about Darwin reading Malthus and developing some of his ideas on what he wrote.
I agree there is a population problem. People keep breeding for no real reason other than to give their life purpose, because it was purposeless beforehand, or to gratify an egoistic inclination.
All this ‘rights talk’ in the West, although it’s not proper human rights, more like narcissism, has turned the West into a nothing but vehicle to keep the herd’s egos gratified. Nihilism incorporated.
Agreed, though my source is Darwin, not some enclopedia whose definitions can be changed by anyone with differing opinions!
Ierrellus, so why don’t you show us your source. I mean, did you get this from Darwin directly?
Never mind the encyclopedia then. I have many sources that contradict you.
Imp, either you’re one of the most successful people at claoking your sarcasm, or you’ve totally lost it.
Anyways, as Ierrelus said, it’s not a problem of population, it’s distribution of resources. Of course, though I agree on that point, I’m almost 100% sure I disagree with him on the manner of solving it.
Far be it from me to restrict the reproductive rights of anyone (though the Catholic Church in the so-called third world seems to revel in it), but with that freedom comes responsibility. If you can’t feed your children, don’t have another one. And if you do, don’t consider it somehow my responsibility to pay for him/her.
And I’m sure that’s going to seem callous and mean to a lot of people. It’s not that I necessarily oppose helping to care for someone else’s child. What I do oppose is forcing me to do so.
totally lost what? do you think the human animal will suddenly evolve into the perfect socialistic/communistic community by some stroke of group enlightenment?
history never repeats…
-Imp
Population growth is directly tied to personal income. The higher the personal income the fewer the children.
So, to solve the population problem all we need to do is give everyone good paying jobs.
Otherwise we must resort to massive warfare and pandemics of fatal diseases but they must be able to reduce the population substantially without affecting the economy or they will just exacerbate the problem.
or stop giving the cure to diseases to everyone…
-Imp
Why should I do your homework? I can find contradictions from either POV. I actually read books!
Ierrellus.
You act like a thinker who doesn’t wants to share one’s ideas honestly.
Thanks. I’ve been accused before of bias. Dishonesty is a new one. Read Darwin’s notes as opposed to notes about him.
Bias, dishonest… How about arrogant also.
And what notes are you referring too? Notes you are just privy to.