Hey Mohammed, all living entities engage in eating, sleeping, mating and defending - you left out this last one.
So what makes humans different from every other animal, bird, fish, amoeba on the planet? If humans merely engage in eating, sleeping, mating and defending this is animal life - not human life.
Human life is meant to ponder the big questions in life: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? How did I get here? Why am I here?
You won’t see dogs, cats or birds pondering these questions. This is what human life is meant for, not just eating, sleeping, mating and defending.
I don’t know, I had a wolf dog that seemed to be pondering some of those things. Since they can’t speak, we will never know… but the non verbal communication between dog and people is just as meaningful as people vs people so it stands to reason they are capable of some of those thoughts, at least to the level that humans were several thousand years ago before science answered a lot of the questions, knowledge which has been handed down through language. But without language I doubt we are that much different than dogs.
Hladini:
Simple answer...Yes. Expect more population control programs via manufactured pathogens, along with continuous disinformation and propaganda efforts, designed to shatter one's personal confidence in one's own mind and thoughts. I have no doubt the Human Race will be culled way down, especially in the Third-World, no matter how many biological accidents it takes to do so...or ifthe strategic use of EMP weapons is deamed necessary. But, the LAST THING we need to worry about is CO2!...and making more of it...the VERY LAST THING! In fact, the more CO2 the better! What if their target population is only 500 Million? If so, lots of death and disease coming.dogs can’t talk?
The only way to save the earth that works with man's nature is to go to space. To go to space for resources. To go to space to allow population to grow.How about the alternative of not growing the population? Why is growth the only path we consider? This is an excellent example of the cost of growth: https://youtu.be/ihPfB30YT_c Going to space is not a permanent fix. It only delays the day of reckoning. I did the math once. Assumptions are unlimited space travel and 1% population growth. We could overpopulate the entire galaxy in less than 2,500 years. perpetual growth is not sustainable.
ABMath,
I remember reading an article by Issac Asimov. He ran calculations like the one you just noted. As I recall, he stated that in about six and a half thousand years, every particle of matter in the Universe would have to be appropriated just to constitute the matter necessary to build all the human bodies that would exist.
I may be wrong about the number of years he calculated, but you get the point.
We can’t go on like this.
Dogs and cats and in fact all living entities have a consciousness, which is the symptom of the soul. The soul is absolute, there are not different souls for dogs or cats or humans; the only difference is, what vehicle has the soul taken birth in this time around?
When consciousness leaves the body - especially mammal/foul/fish bodies - it immediately starts to rot and is quickly disposed of because spirit moves matter, matter does not move spirit.
Anyone who loves a pet knows that pet is a unique personality and no other pet is exactly like that specially loved pet.
No difference of opinion there.
However, animals cannot contemplate the purpose of life, the meaning of life, or aspire to meet the Creator/Lord.
It’s interesting that Americans are absolutely horrified when they hear of some Asians eating cats and dogs; similarly Hindus are horrified when they hear of some Westerners eating cows - their beloved cultural pet/household member.
I believe in the laws of physics: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It’s the law of Karma. When I truly understood that concept, I stopped eating flesh food.
Since then (1983), I have become much more in tune with animals and can relate to them as a spirit souls with unique personalities, not objects to be exploited for my pleasure. (Maybe to keep body and soul together, but not for pleasure, taste buds, or status.)
Good heavens, what good would that achieve? Don’t for a moment think that we would leave the sociopaths and psychopaths behind! Oh no, they’ll be there in droves, exciting new fields to conquer and exploit! I cynically imagine they’d show up among the second or third waves to migrate — having waited until the first wave took the casualties and subsequent waves made things more comfortable and psychopath-friendly.
Give the poor long-suffering universe a break!
Trite observation: we are already living in and on the best possible spaceship for our journey. It’s called Planet Earth. It has air, water, food, and above all the abundant microbial lifeforms without which we will quickly die.
Some years ago I got to know the Keeper of Primates at the Perth Zoo. He has special love for his orangutans, adamant that they possess self-awareness and a theory of mind. Very advanced characteristics for a “mere” animal. He’s now spending a lot of time in Borneo trying to preserve orang habitat, any amount of which is being destroyed for profit and the orangs slaughtered as being irrelevant to development.
On my living room wall is a painting by an orangutan living at the Perth Zoo. The orang herself chose the colours, chose the brushes, and produced the painting within a controlled, designated area of the paper. Zoo staff noted how she was being extra thoughtful about this design, proceeding deliberately. The results are better than a lot of human efforts, and are the calibre of work that a human artist, once admitted to the “Art Club” of course, would be given much credit for.
On the same wall I’ve got a painting done by a Thai elephant named Gung at the Melbourne Zoo. Gung wielded the brush but the keeper chose the colours and brush, and held the canvas for Gung. Even so, he made a great piece of abstract art. Other elephants have applied brush to canvas and each elephant creates a different design. Some are better than others.
It’s this aspect of nature and human-animal relations that is in line for destruction as our machine civilisation ravages the biosphere. It makes me weep.
If TPTB wish to reduce total human numbers, then all they need to do is bring the net reproduction rate down, way down, and let nature take its course.
TPTB could appear benign and civilised while the rest of us live out our lives and die off. No need for mass extermination programs, no need for coercion. Maybe something in the water or food which in effect causes mass sterilisation. This is also an old idea which was never practicable — until now.
A lot depends on how quickly they want to reduce the population.
Solar Panels require progressively less and less energy to manufacture, and are on a par with high quality oil wells.
The main argument against solar panels is that they take more energy to manufacture than they produce over their lifespan. While that may have been true years ago, fast moving developments in the semiconductor industry has made solar panels very cheap and very low energy to produce. In fact, the vast amount of energy that goes into producing solar electricity is not from the panels themselves but instead a result from big corporation solar farm practices that are extremely wasteful (but lucrative) and that jack up the cost and energy input more than 5 times. Further, the main obstacle to low cost and low input-energy solar electric (the intermittency problem) can largely be overcome by behavioral changes that reject the high cost equipment and methods offered by Big Solar.
Many of the reductions in energy needed to produce solar cells have come from improved cutting of wafers, which are 2.5 times thinner than before (i.e. 2.5 times less energy/starting material), improvements in silicon usage and improvements in chemistry.1 Recycling of energy and of cutting waste contributes energy savings.2 Further efficiency (lower energy consumption during manufacture) improvements are ongoing and the progression of lower cost solar cells is not stopping.3
The remaining energy inputs (and increased costs) for making solar electricity comes directly from the “need” to store energy to overcome the “intermittency problem.” But this high energy input/cost largely can be avoided by altering behavior to consume most of solar energy by using high demand items such as water heating, cooking, making of ice, air conditioning, clothes washing during daylight hours, with appliances that tolerate low and intermittent power sources. Think like a plant. Use batteries sparingly for night time lighting, television, computer, cell phone and fans, to drastically cut costs and energy inputs. By rejecting Big Solar practices and by thinking like a plant (separating light reactions from dark reactions) the energy returned on investment for solar electric can approach 100.
(I have a longer detailed writing on this topic but no one has time to read 15 page essays these days, thus this summary,
This Stupid Dream about solving energy problems by going to outer space is part of the stupid wasteful thinking brought to us by television and a corrupt corporate system. We can walk away from the corrupt system, in part by making our own energy but only if we reject Big Solar)
1 “advanced gas phase poly-silicon production processes, ...are still making impressive progress in decreasing costs... and present the promise to reduce the cost of silicon down to $12/kg” See “Approaches to the development of environmentally friendly and resource-saving technology for solar-grade silicon production” by Sergey M. Karabanov (a1), Dmitriy V. Suvorov (a1), Dmitry Y. Tarabrin (a1), Evgeniy V. Slivkin Energy and Sustainability vol. 4 issue 35 2019 pp. 1937-1947 chapter 5.
2“Recycling of silicon metal powder from industrial powder waste streams”
by Monica Moen, Terje Halvorsen, Knut Mørk, SjurVelken Metal Powder Report
Volume 72, Issue 3, May–June 2017, Pages 182-187.
3Newer techniques are being implemented that are “environmentally safe, scalable and has low power consumption...” Much of this is basic large scale manufacturing technology wherein large scale allows efforts to reuse energy such as counter-current flows. “Approaches to the development of environmentally friendly and resource-saving technology for solar-grade silicon production” by Sergey M. Karabanov (a1), Dmitriy V. Suvorov (a1), Dmitry Y. Tarabrin (a1), Evgeniy V. Slivkin Energy and Sustainability vol. 4 issue 35 2019 pp. 1937-1947
I think the important point not really being discussed is that WE dont have much of any say in the matter. On the whole, we are debt serfs with little to no net assets to our names. While the best thing we could do for the environment is “nothing”, for the majority of us that isn’t possible because we’d starve. We’d have no money for rent or food.
As a result, we are forced to go get a job. To “produce” as the economists like to say. There are two types of jobs. In the public sector you can get paid for doing work, regardless of whether it is deemed “productive”. But an economy geared around this is frowned upon as it is socialism. The other job you can get is in the “private” sector. And a company is only going to hire you if you can “produce” profits. Real profits = growth.
The origin of this system is the debt slavery monetary system we are all a part of which is creating a few extremely wealthy people at the top who aim to own the entire world. They will own it via debt. If you spend your life trying to get rid of your debt, you are owned by them.
This system FORCES people to go out and rape and pillage the land, to “produce”, which is really just a synonym for “consume” – consume natural resources.
While it would be great if we could all just do “nothing” (at least, economically nothing) for half the day, living simply on our 5 acre plots of land, only working enough to buy a few extra things in life, that isn’t going to happen. Our masters have other plans for us.
They are getting richer and richer stealing from the middle class. To keep itself from starving, the middle class must go out and consume more and more.
So before we talk about the possible future of everyone living sustainably on their little plot of land, the bigger issue we first need to figure out is how to take that wealth and land back from the elites.
The longer I live, the more convinced am I that this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum.— George Bernard Shaw
What was he doing here then? and why I am here, other than this , i’d agree.
When china went to 1 child policy, they didnt think they will kill half their population that quick. Bringing reproduction to 1 - will halve the population in less than 50 years. IN the US if not for hispanics, we would be declining severely. And even with them we are marginally staying close to even. What the heck the rest of the world did , I am not sure… because , in the “richest” country in the world , I cant afford more than 1.
This system FORCES people to go out and rape and pillage the land, to "produce", which is really just a synonym for "consume" -- consume natural resources.This is very reminiscent of the description of Christopher Columbus in "A Peoples History of the United States": because Columbus found no gold among the Arawak people, he was forced to load his ships with the Arawak as slaves to take back to Spain, to show something for his efforts. Before his return to the New World, his benefactors told him that he could not come back a second time empty handed: without gold. With this goal in the forefront of his mind, he and the Spanish then forced the Arawak people to mine for gold, leading to the rather accelerated genocide of the Arawak people as a whole. As Zinn wrote, genocide was justified in the name of "progress", all because of the demand by the Spanish monarchy that Columbus "produce" gold for their coffers. Please excuse my loose paraphrasing of Zinn's text. It seems to me that the concepts of "production" and "progress" are very closely related, as well as very much baked into our system - our history - as is slavery. Whereas Columbus and the Spanish used physical force and death as the yoke to enslave the Arawak people, we are much too "civilized" to use the same barbaric methods on our own people. Debt is the "modern" tool by which our citizens are tricked into slavery, and a very seductive tool at that. Mark, your statement that "we first need to figure out is how to take that wealth and land back from the elites" reminded me of the article Adam had posted a week or so ago asking for ideas for peaceful, non-violent revolution against the current system. It occurred to me that if a debt-based system is predicated upon its "slaves" paying back the debt - the very yoke that keeps them enslaved - then the antidote to this type of slavery would be for the debtors to stop paying their debts. As we learned way back in the "Crash Course", the fractional reserve system is based upon the implicit agreement that the debtor makes their monthly payments to the lender and thereby supports the creation of the currency that is loaned into "existence" in the first place. If "We the People", i.e. tax donkeys and debt slaves, just stopped making the payments would we not disrupt the system at its foundation? And non-violently at that? It seems ironic to me that the same system that demands progress at all costs, including the genocide of many different cultures at least since 1492, is the very same system that finds itself in need of a "solution" to the human population problem that it created - albeit inadvertently - in the first place. I believe that there are just too many coincidences that support the idea that COVID was created in a lab and not "naturally occurring". It sounds like everyone on this thread is pretty much in agreement about human nature and the ethical challenges of population control, including myself. My initial response after reading this article was that the best solution is the example of the plagues that have non-selectively reduced the human population in the past. Other comments above have spoken to this as well. The biggest challenge to naturally occurring pathogens at this point in history is that our own technology can and would neutralize any naturally evolved pathogen with the speed and veracity expected of an advanced culture. This issue, coupled with the 'sloppiness' (i.e. high rate of infection) of most historical pathogens, almost presents the "need" to present a solution using genetic engineering. One would want a pathogen that is non-selective (mostly), is highly resistant to vaccines, does not have an infection rate that is too high or too low, has a tendency to ebb and flow over time so as to allow complacency to arise in the affected population(s), and has staying power - either through massive damage of organ systems to those it infects but doesn't kill (so that they are taken out the second or third time), or by complexity of design. Couple this pathogen with a msm/propaganda machine that can continually promise a vaccine but never quite deliver, and you have a near perfect method of drawing out the entire pandemic long enough to achieve the desired result - lowering the population by the prescribed amount, both non-selectively and without prejudice. Sounds an awful lot like COVID. And why wouldn’t any upwardly aspiring multi-billionaire(s) (in the $100’s of billions) not want to be celebrated ten generations hence as the one that had the vision to support the development of the, “Solution that saved the world!”? “Oh, and if COVID doesn't work, then we've got a few more in the pipeline…”
Oye, dude. I employed the word “democracy” in its frequently used sense as a denotation of a class form of government - you know: where the people of a locality have a say in their own government; hence fate. To denote a general principle, not a specific example. “Republicanism,” after all, is a version of democratic governance. (One I also prefer.)
It would not have changed my argument at all to have said “that’s not representational government.” You could as easily have replied to that: “Yes it is. The people elect representatives who do the will of 50% + 1 of their constituents. It’s great if you’re the dominant group of wolves who get to elect the animal who chooses the menu. Sucks to be the minority sheep.”
All you did is export your preoccupation with a pop side-bar argument onto my discussion, whether it fit or not.
My theme had much more to do with “local” vs “regional” government (state level or national - and please don’t sidetrack into ‘we’re not a “nation” but a “federation”.’ Please). I’m asserting that cities must of necessity be fascist* in function in order to secure and sustain the supply chain of goods expropriated from other people’s land and resources. IE, a large urban center is just a colonial empire writ small.
Freedom as our founders meant the term does not and cannot exist where people aggregate into large clusters because those clusters can’t live off the land they’re so densely packed onto, and therefore they must appropriate resources from places to which and for which they have no accountability; and, I asserted, because they have no responsibility to first provision what they later consume, they have no nature-delimited curb on their appropriation behaviors. That leads to over-consumption and under-conservation.
Put another way: where the provision-appropriation link is broken human appetite knows no limits. There’s a significant moral hazard, but it’s toothless: bad behavior is rewarded in the short and medium term. Degradation follows.
If you want to engage the real theme of my post, I welcome the discussion.
- By “fascist” I mean the class form of government in which governors** use the power of their offices to intervene in the marketplace, directing enterprise to provision according to government plan rather than according to the enterprise’s own vision. It is, colloquially, “government management of private business”.
** By “governors” I do not mean to only indicate persons elected to the position of Governor of a state of the United States of America (if I did I would have capitalized the word). I mean anyone who holds an elected or appointed position of governing authority and power within a politico-economic structure - whatever the provenance of that structure.
See: “The Good Gut,” Sonnenberg and Sonnenberg (Penguin, 2015). Both authors, husband and wife, are on staff in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Also: “Farmacology,” Miller (William Morrow, 2013). She’s a practicing family physician with a degree in Medical Anthropology.
And: “The Hidden Half of Nature,” Montgomery and Bikle (W.W. Norton, 2015). Montgomery is professor of Earth and space sciences at the University of Washington; Bikle is a biologist and environmental planner. This book is the 2nd of 3 Montgomery has written about soil health and its connection to both environment and human health. Bikle, his wife, contributed her expertise to this book’s topic, “the microbial roots of life and health.”
Would love to the the picture painted by the Orangutan.
Time for all of us to start putting our favorite future oriented leaders in contact with each other. Leaders like Chris and Adam are emerging everywhere with spot-on analytical critiques of existing systemic failure and attempts to catalyze a clear vision of a better future.
An excellent example of the power of the analytic approach is Chuck Marohn’s Strong Towns. “THE PROBLEM: GROWTH WITHOUT PROSPERITY”
https://www.strongtowns.org/about
https://www.strongtowns.org/about “We Don’t Need More “Invitations to the Table.” We Need a New Table.”
A more feminine flavor, we have groups attempting to catalyze compassion globally through deep listening , in an attempt to counteract identity politics and growing tribalism.
Otto Scharmer’s U-lab is a good example. Most of us will feel they aren’t analytical enough but they’re building a large glocalized network that is making grass-roots local improvements. https://www.ottoscharmer.com/programs/ulab
You may find them a bit touchy-feely, but if we want change we need to understand and work with those who naturally prefer this communitarian approach to change. https://www.presencing.org/programs/course
We all naturally gravitate to one approach or the other, depending on whether we prefer left-brain, analytical problem-solving or more right-brain interpersonal values analysis. If you hang out with the processing style you prefer, when you interact with the other style you find while you may intellectually agree with the group’s approach, there will always be a lack of resonance, so we have to stretch our deep listening capacities to an often uncomfortable amount.
I challenge each of you to step forward an do it now.
There is a maturity stage beyond making the most of our preferred abilities by partnering with others attempting to move basic change in the same direction. If we can agree on a superordinate goal, such as reducing inequality, then we should be able to work together using our own preferred methodologies. Instead of arguing we should just let each other get on with transformation in our own unique way.
The term for such efforts is meshworking. “Meshworking intelligence uses imagination, courage and powers of attraction. It articulates designs from the meshing of the diversities in people and thereby releases and reorganizes new intelligences that are currently locked and blocked in silos of sameness.” Some examples:
https://integralcity.com/voices-intelligences/meshworking-intelligence/
http://www.humanemergence.nl/ (select the English option)
We all tend to preach to the choir. Time to get the choirs together!