218 comments on DrumBeat: August 29, 2007
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218 comments on DrumBeat: August 29, 2007
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Looking at some of the down thread posts, I wish folks would make up their minds. Regardless of the current deathtoll from all causes, we still increase the global population by 76,000,000 or so every year, and I keep hearing people complaining about the population increase as being the major cause of GW, PO, and related stuff. So which is it people? You want to reduce the death toll or reduce the global population, or what? You can't have it both ways. Make up your damn minds.
How about reducing human suffering and death, while motivating people to voluntarily reduce world's population in the long run by reducing the birth rate?
Peak Oil isn't an issue because of an abstract need to maintain large reseves of oil undergroud. It's scary because most of the world is dependant on a constant supply of cheap easy energy to maintain its standard of living. Concerns about Global Warming are more linked to logistical challenges facing huge portions of the world's population as the climate changes than to an aesthetic desire to conserve a "pristine atmosphere"
You're dreaming. People are designed to reproduce. How many people do you know who are "sad" when the wife gets pregnant, or their kids have grandchildren? Like I said; Make up your damn mind. The Catholic religion encourages reproduction and prohibits birth control, as does Islam and most other religions. Think you can change the Pope's mind? We will literally screw ourselves to death, given the choice.
And yet...there are cultures where zero population is the ideal.
The problem is they tend to be overrun by the cultures who breed like bunnies. :-/
Yep. ;) The problem is that breeding like bunnies is so damn much fun :) Let's hear it for 72 (temporary) virgins: Go Team Go! :)
No, it isn't. Sex is fun, raising kids is not.
Cultures that embrace zero population are not necessarily anti-sex. They use birth control, including infanticide and abortion. They encourage suicide. They do things other than intercourse, if you know what I mean.
The problem isn't really that people want kids. Sure they do, but most people are fine with one or two.
The problem is when two societies are in conflict, the one with the higher population density tends to win.
I sorta have to agree with the sex is fun, raising kids is not comment. I've fathered 4 with 2 wives ( sequential, not concurrant :) ), but the raising part is not all bad. Mostly good actually. I do think your view of most people being fine with one or 2 is a very "Western" viewpoint however. And even then, there are significant departures from what is "culturally normal". Mormons come to mind, as well as
Catholic doctrine.
In any case, reproduction is a biological imperative, regardless of the cultural aspects. We tend to think that our current status as top of the food chain heap is the be-all and end-all of evolution. Sorry. Not happening. Religious/cultural beliefs notwithstanding, biological and cultural evolution continues without regard for our petty concerns. Whether anyone likes it or not, it is winner takes all in the end.
See my other comments along this line, below.
You sound like a man. ;-)
I daresay the raising would not be as fun if you didn't have enough food for them.
Disagree. Birthrates tend to drop naturally when safe, affordable birth control is available, as long as the children you do have are likely to survive to adulthood.
And too many children were a problem in western societies, too, before birth control was widely available. (Google baby farming.) Even middle class families could not afford more than one child in a household. Children were turned out in the streets as early as age 3 (forming bands of boys a la Oliver Twist). Orphanages were church-sanctioned child-killing machines. Only a tiny percentage of children lived to age 16 in such places.
I don't think anyone here thinks that.
Yes, but other cultures have kept their populations at sustainable levels for thousands of years. Clearly, it's possible. It's not easy, but it's possible.
And these days, population density is not the advantage it once was. Hence Israel's dominating the Palestinians despite being outnumbered by them. (Of course, whether they'll be able to keep doing that in the post-carbon age is whole 'nother story.)
The Hadith about 72 virgins is sketchy, sort of like the fascination certain Christian sects have with same sex relationships based on a handful of conflicting statements in the bible. Yeah, its written, but is it spiritual in nature, or just a "Uncle Sam Wants You" billboard of the times?
It's also, a recent scholarly argument suggests, a misinterpretation of a promise of food and drink for the faithful.
In particular, white raisins. Of "crystal clarity", though.
PtE, I read recently that 'white raisins' was a slang word for a jewel stone in the area of Mecca.
James Gervais
With a handle like "Gene" (e.g. DNA), I assume you are a geneticist with a twisted funny bone, probably due to a deficiency in a critical seriousness allele.
The reproduction horse always precedes the religious cart.
All species on this planet are evolved/wired to reproduce as much as they can. If their ancestors didn't have a strong, built in genetic drive for reproduction, they wouldn't be here. Simple as that.
Religion fools people into "feeling" as if they aren't animals but instead they are "divine" creatures.
Fact of the matter is that we ARE animals and we fornicate for the same reason that stray dogs on the street do it. We are driven by our genes to do it. This isn't a matter of free choice. It is a matter of genetic imperative.
right on.
as a longtime TOD lurker, i don't mean to offend everyone with my very first post, but what has always amazed me is the blind sense of 'entitlement' to procreation that many people seem to have, regardless of the cultural/religious justification they state.
what upsets me even more is state-sponsored drives to increase population: spain, poland, quebec, etc.
every day i see people with kids they could not afford to have if it wasn't for the 'baby bonuses' and other incentives these kids got them.
i can't help but wonder how these people will survive when peak oil really hits home, the state's taps run dry, and they have to fend for themselves.
I say we do both. Reduce the death toll by reducing the population by reducing the reproduction. Eventually everyone dies, all we have to do is reduce the amount of people being born. The problem is, most people like to have control over their right to reproduction. I can't blame them.
Out of all my friends, only one of them PLANNED to have a child, all the rest had theirs via "oops" and "Oh-no." I have no children yet, and as time goes by, I think not having any is the best course of action.
How about this, government sponsored vasectomy operations for anyone who wants one?
~Durandal (http://www.wtdwtshtf.com/)
Gene,
I think we can have both, but just not quickly.
The real sources of population growth are desperately poor countries. There, more kids means more field hands. Most of them have womwn who have no power in their relationships, and can't say no to sex and kids-like all the Moslem countries, or the countries in Central and South America who are Catholic.
Global warming comes from the US, and the rapidly industrialising countries, who just want a prosperous life style, and who can blame them? Working in a "dark, satanic mill" beats the shit out of wading all day barefoot in a rice patty, especially if you can drive home in a car. So why aren't we selling them electric cars and helping every child in the world get hold of a computer? Its cheaper to educate them than kill them fighting us in a war. As a marine, I know you know I'm right. Educated people just don't have growing populations.
In the US its our government, the best that money can buy, letting the power companies burn coal and the automobiles get 12 miles a gallon, and we have to breathe their poison. I don't think people should be allowed to dump their pollution in my air any more than they can take a dump on the sidewalk. And you cut the pollution from cars to 1/3rd when you make it go three times as far on a gallon of gas.That's what CAFE standards means. Wind, nukes and solar don't make CO2 pollution,new power plants should be built only with non polluting power sources.
Alan's electrification of rail makes great sense economicially, it adds real security to the US and it clears all the highways of long range trucks and the freeways of cars.
I'm sorry for the jobs of the teamsters, the coal miners and the power plants that refuse to change, just like I'm sorry for the jobs of tobacco growers and asbestos miners or the guys that made patent medicines with heroin. Sometimes society makes decisions that step on toes but have to be done.
Bob Ebersole
I don't know Bob. I've worked in a "dark satanic mill" and I've also trudged thru many a rice patty. Pretty much the same except for the leaches are of different species. And yes, you're right about "civilized" populations having lower birthrates, however that does not mean that civilized populations will be the winners in the race for superior DNA. The point is that individual cultures, and individuals, are continually sacrificed to ensure survival of the species. We, being currently at the top of the heap, think we have a right to remain there. Guess what? Evolution continues apace, regardless of the petty concerns of ant hills or people. If we are smart enough, and strong enough, and adaptable enough we might, might, continue to exist as a species. StarTrek not withstanding. So be it.
I guarantee that some of today's cultures, countries, religions, etc. will not survive. So the only question is; which will continue and which won't? Choose sides. And be prepared to defend your choice with deadly violence. Because if you're not, you lose.
"On then! Value means survival-
Value. If our progeny
Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,
That will prove its deity
(Far from pleasant, by our present
Standards, though it well may be)."
...from "Evolutionary Hymn", a satirical poem by C.S. Lewis
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." G. Orwell.
Peace has ever been a set of principles coupled with the willingness to do violence to those who do not grasp them fully.
A similar sentiment, though from a much less famous source.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
“WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”
- Gen. Smedley Butler
Except that I am constatly amazed by how many very educated people in my area (Silicon Valley) have three children by choice. They obviously either don't appreciate or don't care that if everyone did that we would grow the population 50% per generation.
That's assuming that all of your 3 or more offspring survive into reproductive adulthood.
Regrettably and sadly, that is not a given.
All too many couples (yes even here in our golden Silicon Valley) lose their children to car accidents, disease, crimes of violence, drugs, etc.
There are even these never-occurring events called war and drafts. You can spend a whole life time raising a child, sending them to the best schools and so on; only to have Uncle Sam pluck them out of line and send them to the front so they (and you) can make the "ultimate sacrifice" for God and country.
Lemmings are we, born to be free, even of that nasty gravity.
Hi Bob,
Thank you for mentioning "...women who have no power in their relationships...."
The organization "Human Rights Watch" sums it up as follows:
http://hrw.org/women/
"Millions of women throughout the world live in conditions of abject deprivation of, and attacks against, their fundamental human rights for no other reason than that they are women.
Violence and discrimination against women are global social epidemics, notwithstanding the very real progress of the international women's human rights movement in identifying, raising awareness about, and challenging impunity for women's human rights violations.
We live in a world in which women do not have basic control over what happens to their bodies. Millions of women and girls are forced to marry and have sex with men they do not desire. Women are unable to depend on the government to protect them from physical violence in the home, with sometimes fatal consequences, including increased risk of HIV/AIDS infection. Women in state custody face sexual assault by their jailers. Women are punished for having sex outside of marriage or with a person of their choosing (rather than of their family's choosing). Husbands and other male family members obstruct or dictate women's access to reproductive health care."
Etc.
(I skipped the section on rape as a weapon of war.)