Why I Do Go "Seems Fiction" on Overpopulation Dystopias

Overpopulation facts - the problem no one will discuss: Alexandra Paul at TEDxTopanga
TEDx Talks | Ajoutée le 3 janv. 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNxctzyNxC0

I

1:33 "200,000 years ago?"

Adam was created 7000 + some centuries ago.

While Neanderthals and Sethites / "Modern Humans" / Sapiens both descend from him, and so do Antecessor, Heidelbergensis and a few more, "Modern Humans" are only ten generations from Adam, if you read Genesis 5.

Modern humans as in populating Earth after the Flood, have, as such, been around since the Flood, c. 5000 years ago (plus or minus some).

1:40 "By 1850, there were one billion people."

Not contesting that. I am however contesting the idea population "curves" were for very long just "crawling along the bottom of the graph" and then exploding 1800-1850.

What exploded was the number of non-European countries we could get somewhat reliable facts and stats from.

1:46 "it took 200,000 years to put the first billion on Earth"

No. Did not. We do not even legitimately know that the one billion by 1850 was an unprecedented peak. Not to mention that Christ born Anno Mundi (4004 or) 5199 or 5500 and add AD 1850 to that, is very far from 200,000 years.

II

220,000 new births per day, may be unsustainable in a very long run, and without interruptions or setbacks.

220,000 new births per day today is very far from unsustainable, one reason being, in many countries they tend to die quicker than in others.

Another one is, if a population gets crowded, it starts doing things - even without wanting to - which make marriage and childbirth rather less easy to come by.

Adding deliberate measures to keep birth rates down or reduce them is very far from necessary, it is indeed a burden and one way in which to get more space for people is to get rid of those who make the burdens unnecessarily high for poorer people.

In 1945 and following years, there were a few trials in Nuremberg. One of the accusation counts was for preventing Jewish and "pure German" couples to marry and reproduce. Hanging some, putting some in prison (where crowding is seen as part of the punishment) is one way to get rid of "superfluous people." Meaning, we identify as "superfluous" those who tend to call others so.

III

3:34 There is another possibility too, for stopping growth.

Because people have VERY large families and then VERY many of the children become monks, nuns or priests.

That is why Ireland and Italy did not become "overpopulated".

Oh, in 1846 Ireland became undernourished for its population. It is called the "potato famine". It had nothing to do with Irish people being too many. It had something to do with monoculture in terms of potato strands. Some Peruvian potato types would have been immune to the disaster. It had even more to do with landlords who went:

- "You have no potatoes? Too bad. I still want the wheat you contracted to grow for me, all of it, and if you die in the process, I have some nice Protestants who can take your place."

Anti-Communists rightly decry the Holodomor, the genocide by famine, in Ukraine and neighbouring areas, under Stalin. But before one goes "woohoo" about Capitalism, there was a Holodomor on Ireland too, in 1846, and it was a Capitalist one.

So, no, starvation disasters have historically not been triggered by overpopulation as such.

Disasters in general leave dead behind. Making many children usually implies there are more chances of someone surviving them and burying them.

I am reminded of the fact Noah got his three sons (a ridiculously small number for a patriarch) at the very ripe age of 500 (a ridiculously late age for a pre-Flood patriarch). I think he may have been victims of antinatalist pressures in the pre-Flood world (that is at least one option of explaining his family situation) and I think one reason God sent the Flood was antinatalism (including encouraging sodomy, one Jewish tradition has it the Flood came with pre-Flood gay marriage).

Next time, it is not waters.

IV

3:57 "Forcing people not to have children* does not work"

Hear, hear.

So, you would like two people to have one child each. By choice. That is as if twenty people have ten childs together.

That is a plan which has sometimes been tried.

Family A has twelve children, family B has 8, these are together 20. Young Mr A and young Miss B marry and have ten children.

The eleven siblings of Mr. A and the seven of Miss B become nuns and monks and clergy. AND when Mr A and Miss B/MrsA want a babysitter, they have many tto choose from.

A very great idea, as long as entering religion and renouncing marriage is and remains a personal choice.

* Actual words : "to have fewer children"

V

4:12 An education on birth control, you said?

You know, with the idea "I am entitled to have sex but not children from it" comes the idea, if one gets pregnant anyway "oh, this was an accident, how do I get out of this?"

That means abortion, in other words, murder.

4:21 "the benefits of a one-child family"

My mother was the only child. This has hampered her while grandmother was alive, and while both grandparents were alive perhaps too, but especially since grandmother became a widow, since she was so overprotected and overdemanded, she was unable to live her life.

As a result, she had fewer children, and the one remaining "available" when grandmother was very old was me. I felt overdemanded by granny too. And I obviously resented her choice to delay childbirth so long, she only had mother at 36. This made me in turn overprotected and in the end overdemanded too. I was 25 when she died, I was unmarried and childless, and she had become a nightmare to me. As to her daughter.

No, "benefits of a one child family", if you want to sell that snake oil, not here please!

VI

4:56 It is still vital to procreate for survival.

I mean for survival as a civilisation. I do not mean one could not choose monastery or so. I very much do mean, if you are in a couple (and I don't mean a gay or a lesbian couple, those should not be options even to homosexuals) you have no good excuse usually to be "child free" as you put it.

The relations between the generations are degrading. Where they are getting better, it is often because some ethnic conflict solidarises youth on both sides with parental and grandparental generations.

Why? Because youth are getting fewer in proportion (at least with indigenous Westerners), and as a consequence overprotected and overdemanded by older people.

When hippies took some distance from their parents and when then punks took some from theirs, don't you think the manner degraded some between 1968 and 1980?

Part of what monasticism has been criticised for is rewiring the biology to recognise the benefits of not procreating.

Part of the reason monasticism was popular in the Middle Ages is, marriage meant pregnancy, pregnancy meant one particular risk of a painful death.

But being a monastic takes some rewiring.

VII

5:37 "it will suffer less than if there is no more oil or food or water"

You know, petrol doesn't produce food. It transports it and is one way of cooking it, but doesn't produce it.

As to food or water, not one single even local population we know of has ever died because they became too many for the resources. Some have had deaths on such occasions, but we have deaths all of the time.

I don't know any, including 19th C. Sweden or Ireland, community where people first became too many and then starved to death.

This vision is a very mythical dystopia.

Let's say an island can sustain 10,000 people easily and 20,000 people not at all. A population does not rise abruptly from 10 to 20,000 (except at mass migrations), and therefore, while they were growing in numbers, they would feel the strain and some would abstain.

When I say "mythological dystopia", I do not mean mythological as Hercules is "mythological" because part of his existence is interpreted by those giving us his story in mythological terms. I mean, it is as mythological as Gaia and Uranus. In other words, moonshine.

VIII

5:47 "ten billion people in 40 years, which is what the UN is projecting"

Very conditionally, I hope?

Say, if anticlericalism continues to throw out the monastic option from the equation, being one condition, or if dechristianisation means monasticism makes no sense as to its spiritual, non-material content, and one doesn't become a monk just to relieve population strain on resources ...

Next question, could 10 000 000 000 be provided with food?

Let's say "3 acres and a cow" per person.

Does the land available provide room for 30 000 000 000 acres?

It is 46 875 000 square miles, unless the converter was wrong. Land is 57 500 000 square miles. Desertified areas can be cultivated. Irrigation can come through - for instance - introducing Mediterranean sea water into Sahara (proposed by Ghadaffi and Lyndon LaRouche, proposed by myself in a somewhat different fashion, with windmills to transport the water up land into Sahara).

IX

6:59 How about you starting to use a little fewer resources per person in US instead?

How much of the water used for making paper can be recycled after that? I mean, it hardly remains all in the paper, obviously?

7:41 You know, "quality of life" does not absolutely depend on how many resources you use.

Monks and nuns can be considered as living the best lives (not perhaps in the "quality of life statistics" perspective), while they are also using fewer resources per person.

They also increase quality of life for the rest, by being there, by doing good things and a few more.