Don’t do the Malthus, please. A growing population doesn’t need to be ‘self-suffocating’, if said population is capable of cultural evolution based on population size.
I don’t know how I’ve never heard of Malthus (or more likely at my age, just completely forgotten). As far as I can glean from my superficial perusal of his works, he seems to focus on human population vs quality of life. Dated, but I would think still a valid path of inquiry.
When I mentioned our “self-suffocating breeding issue”, I was thinking primarily of the ongoing ecological collapse and climate change caused by the impact and mere existence of billions of humans.
It’s not “mere existence” though, is it? It’s the cancerous ideology of endless growth perpetuated by capitalism, the profits of the wealthy few driving us to consume more than we need or want, and both economic and military conflicts driven by greed and nationalism. All of these things are fixable without misanthropically condemning all of humanity.
I know it’s hard sometimes, and believe me, I fall back into the same headspace every now and then. It’s right to get mad, we should be angry about what’s being done to the world and it’s inhabitants, but the blame is not on your neighbor toiling away for minimum wage, nor the growing populations in developing nations, either of which contribute fractions of a fraction to the climate collapse compared to the people who are actively profiting from it.
Says much less about innate violence in humans than our self-suffocating breeding issue.
Don’t do the Malthus, please. A growing population doesn’t need to be ‘self-suffocating’, if said population is capable of cultural evolution based on population size.
World population growth is also logistical.
I don’t know how I’ve never heard of Malthus (or more likely at my age, just completely forgotten). As far as I can glean from my superficial perusal of his works, he seems to focus on human population vs quality of life. Dated, but I would think still a valid path of inquiry.
When I mentioned our “self-suffocating breeding issue”, I was thinking primarily of the ongoing ecological collapse and climate change caused by the impact and mere existence of billions of humans.
It’s not “mere existence” though, is it? It’s the cancerous ideology of endless growth perpetuated by capitalism, the profits of the wealthy few driving us to consume more than we need or want, and both economic and military conflicts driven by greed and nationalism. All of these things are fixable without misanthropically condemning all of humanity.
I know it’s hard sometimes, and believe me, I fall back into the same headspace every now and then. It’s right to get mad, we should be angry about what’s being done to the world and it’s inhabitants, but the blame is not on your neighbor toiling away for minimum wage, nor the growing populations in developing nations, either of which contribute fractions of a fraction to the climate collapse compared to the people who are actively profiting from it.