Dreams Of Noise

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I just hope he's also right about the speed with which we'll adapt when the crunch hits. Also... Clarke's "Death and the Senator", anyone?

I remember Northrup, from when I lived up there. May he be remembered well.

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siliconshaman.livejournal.com

I hate to say, but I am not as optimistic as he is. [which feels weird to say].

But then, I've studied history and biology.. I know that every single civilisation that has ever existed, has eventually fallen... and every species has undergone at least one population collapse.

I also think that conditions are right for this to occur, and I'm somewhat cynical about the probability of us doing anything effective.

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sethb.livejournal.com

The Earth is full. Please delete anybody you can.

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tigertoy.livejournal.com

If the earth were merely full, a radical change in attitudes might solve it. The problem is that the earth is way more than full. My feeling is that the real carrying capacity of the planet, assuming that the humans who live on it are entitled to a reasonable level of benefits of modern technology, is half a billion to a billion. More than that and we're either demanding that a lot of people live without a lot of stuff that we now know is possible (which we're already doing), or we burn the future viability of the planet (which we're now doing so fast that a lot of people are noticing it).

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And in a lot of ways these problems were caused by conservative religious thought. First you have religions that treat women like baby factories and say they have an obligation to "go forth an multiply". That alone has caused great problems in areas that can't support a tenth of the people they have. Combine that with the "God gave dominion over the Earth to man" and "God will provide" and "God will save us" attitudes and you have the short sightedness that lets these problems build up.

Add to that the political conservative nature of promoting a "free" market and avoiding the consequences of unchecked industries and (worse) acting like any kind of environmental regulation is the product of Satan's nether regions. The result is a planet where the systems that will keep us alive will collapse for the sake of money. Those in power won't recognize the problem until it directly affects them in a way that they can't buy their way out of it.

IMHO the first step to fix the problem is to quit acting like contraception is evil and to actively promote it. Unless you can provide for a child, you shouldn't reproduce. Basically if you need public assistance; stop fucking.

Second step is to end the notion that businesses are holy things that need to run free. Businesses are like food animals, to be controlled, used, and killed as needed. The businesses won't be happy, but they're not people. And to do that, we have to make them responsible for their actions. Businesses make money by internalizing profits and externalizing costs. If they can save money by dumping toxic waste in the river instead of cleaning it up, they will and that notion must stop. People should not have to pay for corporate greed.

After that, things are going to get tough. For most of human existence, the young has supported the old because there were fewer old people than young people. That's not true for many parts of the world. We have to do more to care for the older people and learn from their wisdom. I'd like to see a return to families and community where we took care of one another instead of everyone out for themselves.

We're also going to have to do more with less. Electronic mediums will become more important since 1000 copies of an e-book uses less space than 1000 copies of a physical book for example. How much space would you need if all our comics, books, movies, etc were kept electronically? Naturally we'll need some physical copies in case something happened to the eversions, but not many.

The less we need, the less we want, the less we use and the more there will be for others.

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qraccoon.livejournal.com

I agree with most of this except the stop fucking part. Nothing is going to stop people from fucking. The current overpopulation problem is proof of that. We just need to encourage fucking responsibly. Most people, when given the education and the means to prevent pregnancy, will do just that.

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Agreed... at least until you run up against religious and/or social prohibitions. Here in the US, for example, the Catholic Church's prohibition against birth control has largely lost its grip -- but the same can't be said for many other countries. That's a problem. So are cultures that measure a man's masculinity by the number of children (or the number of sons) that he fathers.

Also not happy AT ALL with the classism of "if you need public assistance, stop fucking". This implies that anyone who isn't desperately poor can go ahead and have all the children they want because "they can afford it" -- which (1) does little to fix the problem and (2) is right in line with current Republican attitudes, which are disgusting to say the least.

*sigh* What I wouldn't give for a tasteless, odorless, medically-safe, readily-soluble substance that would reduce human fertility by 50%. In container-load quantities, with a worldwide distribution plan. (Hey, if I'm going to fantasize, I might as well do it in a big way!)

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kengr

Nah, as long as we are going for "magic" cures, I ewant the one someone proposed where *both* parties have to *want* to have a kid for conception to occur.

That still leaves us with problems in some parts of the world, but how "want to have a kid" is established can solve that.

I forget exactly where I encountered the idea, but the kicker in it was that both mother and father had to do some things that required both forethought and willingness to be moderately inconvenienced for several months before they could have a kid (some sort of biological triggers). The idea being that if you couldn't stick with the regimen, you probably weren't going to be parent material anyway.

Ah. Now I recall. It was the way gryphon fertility worked in Lackey's Valdemar books.

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I disagree with your interpretation that "if you need public assistance, stop fucking" actually means "if you're rich, have all the kids you want" because we're not seeing that. Among the richer nations, birth rate is decreasing.

It may be an unpleasant thought, but it goes along with "if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging". If you need help to feed the children you have, you shouldn't have any more and make the problem worse. As to fixing the problem, the areas of the world facing starvation and high child mortality rates ARE the poor areas because they're making more kids than they could feed. Reduce the number of pregnancies and the starvation problem will get better in a few years.

Remember, with freedom comes responsibility.

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Ah, but religion comes the "go forth and multiply" already invoked here. One word: Octomom.

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I remember the first one of those mega-births. It was in my home state of Iowa. People were thanking God that it was successful and they forgot about the doctors who made it possible.

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Funny thing about that... if you give poor women (in America) control over their own fertility, they STOP MAKING BABIES. The legendary "welfare queen who pops out another baby every year to get a bigger check" is just that -- an urban legend, popularized by Ronald Reagan. But that means affordable, effective birth control, which is anathema to the Religious Right.

Once you move outside of America, you're no longer dealing with the same issues. In most of those very poor and overpopulated areas, they've always been poor, and people keep having kids for the same reason that similar populations always have: because (1) a lot of them are going to die in the first 2 or 3 years, and (2) you want to have at least a couple who survive to adulthood to take care of you when you're old. Don't you DARE go prating about "with freedom comes responsibility" when you're discussing people who don't HAVE the options of freedom that even the desperately poor have in this country.

And take a look at your own statements. First, "among the richer nations, the birth rate is decreasing"; then "those ARE the poor areas because they're making more kids than they can feed". Doesn't this suggest that you're approaching the issue wrongside-to? The way to drop the birth rate is to IMPROVE the standard of living for impoverished areas, and to provide affordable and effective birth control at the same time. Once you break the cycle of "must have as many kids as possible just to survive", the problem fixes itself.

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Those areas you're talking about are highly religious and discourage birth control. The reason why so many children die in the first few years is that there are too many of them to properly distribute resources. Mothers are trying to feed child #2 after #1 died while nursing child #3 and making sure future child #4 isn't stillborn. It makes more sense to have never had 3 & 4 and focus on the remaining. You're saying women should just assume that many of your own children will die and they should accept it by making more is not the way to do it. Doesn't that suggest you thinking about the problem from the wrong side?

And yes, I will talk about how freedom comes responsibility. Even in the poorest areas there are options. Women are not the slaves to their reproductive cycle you're making them out to be. They do not have to have more children as you suggest. They have choices. Tough choices, but choices and if enough of them make the right choices society will change.

Do you think these areas want to be improvised? As you said, they've ALWAYS been poor. Drop the birth rate and the standard of living improves since there is not the fear that so many children would die early. As you said Once you break the cycle of "must have as many kids as possible just to survive", the problem fixes itself. So stop having as many kids as possible like you said. CWAA!

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dornbeast.livejournal.com

I think that you both see the same problem as a whole, but disagree on what the root cause is. Personally, I disagree with you. Having too many children is not a problem in certain regions; it's a solution. Until the area has a solution to the problem which requires as many children as possible, "Stop Having Children" isn't going to do anything useful, unless you count "everybody dies" as useful.

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Don't forget that in man of those areas a lot of kids die in the first year or so because they committed the great crime of being born FEMALE.

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Yeah, we can't stop them but we can discourage them. And by that I don't mean to punish them with denial of services but by making contraception part of basic health care for everyone (and yes, that includes abortions). There's nothing wrong with encouraging self-restraint.

I work at the food bank twice a week and I've seen more than a few women who were preggers. This week I saw a woman pick up a home pregnancy test and I thought, "You need help putting food on the table and you're planning on increasing the help needed?!"

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FUCK YOU. You are JUST like my parents, who assumed that the only reason for me to be on the Pill was because I was fucking everything that moved. Did it for one instant occur to you that she might have been AFRAID she was pregnant? Of course not. CWAA.

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And you assume every woman who is pregnant never wanted to be pregnant. Has the thought that maybe they want to have more children ever occur to you? CWAA.

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Enough, both of you. See, this is why I'm pro-choice. And I don't know about you guys, but -- while there are a million and fifty things that can and should be done to educate people about all of the factors going into a pregnancy -- I'm not going to be the one who sets up rules that judge who should get pregnant when.

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So... YOU blithely assume that the only reason for buying a pregnancy test is because you're trying to get pregnant, and I point out the Star-Destroyer-sized hole in your logic, and suddenly I'm the one assuming that one-size-fits-all? Projection much?

You certainly seem to have a lot invested in being able to feel smugly superior to the people who need the food bank. It does you no credit, and IMO cancels out whatever credit you might have achieved by working there in the first place.

Things Privileged People Don't Have to Worry About: Having total strangers judge your entire life based on the one tiny piece of it which is immediately visible to them, and then sneer and say you don't deserve help.

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dornbeast.livejournal.com

By the way, what does CWAA mean?

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A tag I've been using for awhile, inspired by this (http://boingboing.net/2010/03/30/recaptioning-new-yor.html). I would rather my friends here not use it on each other.

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PLEASE no invective aimed at each other. Sorry, alverant.

S_J, I do agree with your analysis, though. While there's only the one use for the test, there are lots of motivations.

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kengr

Religions merely reflect the societies they developed in.

In pre-industrial and early industrial societies you *needed* lots of kids for two reasons. First, so enough would survive. Second so that the survivors could help work the farm or family business and take care of you when you got too old to work.

Get women educated, and they'll quit wanting to have hordes of (now un-needed) children. That's well established. But you have to change the *society*. If you do, the religion will fight the changes, but you['ll mostly prevail.

Change the religion (not likely without educating the populace) and nothing will change until the *societal* norms change.

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There comes a point where religion controls the society. Look at where most of the opposition to gay marriage comes from, not society but religion. A religion that says, "Gay marriage should be legal." have more followers who agree. Remember, if religion didn't influence people then it wouldn't exist.

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I just came by to say the Google Les Paul tribute's super cool.

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Innit, though? I trust that, tomorrow or the next day, we'll be able to find it at the Google Logo Archive (http://www.google.com/logos/).

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jannyblue.livejournal.com

And there's a "record" function!

Nobody's mentioning that...

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jenrose

THat google logo breaks my brain in a good way.

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dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com

The local paper printed a notice of Northrup's passing without mentioning his most unusual feat.

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gardnerhill.livejournal.com

The problem is also that the troubling consumption due to population isn't being done by Azande or Maria or Parvati's 12 kids in a third-world country - it's being done by Yuppie Tiffany's Happy Meal-scarfing pair of younguns (the Dakotas and Ashleys and Taylors), who consume more of the Earth's resources than 20 kids in a poorer country. So the white middle-class Americans pointing fingers at the women in other nations and saying "Stop having 12 kids!" would do better to have stopped at ZERO kids.

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PROPORTIONALLY they're using more, and at a greater rate... but if you look at usable water in most of the US vs, say, India, there's less there because of the sheer volume of population.

Cutting back the population HERE won't help the population THERE unless they either cut back drastically or they move or we send all our resources to them.

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