[Peace-discuss] Most amusing article I read this week

[LAURIE SOLOMON]

Of course, said in all seriousness with tongue planted firmly in cheek, the 
various wars, conflicts, and police actions engaged in by the US since WWII 
have not really been about world domination and control, oil, security, etc. 
but rather Malthusian attempts at population control by virtue of getting 
our own countries youth killed along with the populations of other 
countries, thereby combating the rabbit characteristics that seem to 
describe the human breeding practices.

It is not anything so sophisticated as the exercise of eugenics; it is the 
good old fashioned unsophisticated exercise of war as a population control - 
much more effective than condoms or birth control pills and quicker than 
starvation or disease.  The world has been exercising the Guppie theory of 
child rearing - EAT YOUR YOUNG or in this case kill them via wars.

I do agree with Mort that the world has only a finite amount of resources 
and can hold only a finite amount of contents.  One of the tings that both 
the Malthusians and their opponents seem to have ignored is that the reason 
the increase in human populations have not had the effects that have been 
predicted in terms of self-limiting populations resulting from a survival of 
the fittest type of Malthusian mechanism is that it has not been the human 
population that has so far suffered or perished  but rather other species 
that have been driven into extinction due to the expansion of human 
populations.  When we have driven all the other species out of existence, it 
will be our turn to drive ourselves out of existence.  Shit rises which is 
why humans have been at the top in this world.

--------------------------------------------------
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2009 1:20 PM
To: "Brussel Morton K." <mkbrussel at comcast.net>
Cc: "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Most amusing article I read this week

> I'll ignore the gratuitous insult -- I'm in favor of women's freedom --  
> and reply that the article is quite serious and worthwhile as (among other 
> things) a condemnation of the American enthusiasm for eugenics (where the 
> Nazis learnt it).
>
> And I love the description of it on Arts & Letters Daily: "The world has 
> too many Malthusians, and what’s worse, they are multiplying like rabbits, 
> becoming a burden to clear thinking about human population growth..."!
>
> Recent history shows that population advance slows with development. 
> People (typically in the third World) aren't poor because they have too 
> many children: they have too many children because they're poor.  An 
> extended family is the only social security for the poor in much of the 
> world.
>
> See now the important new book by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, "The 
> Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better."  The 
> argument is summarized in the subtitle:
>
> "among rich countries, the more unequal ones do worse according to almost 
> every quality of life indicator you can imagine. They do worse even if 
> they are richer overall, so that per capita GDP turns out to be much less 
> significant for general wellbeing than the size of the gap between the 
> richest and poorest 20 per cent of the population ... The evidence that 
> Wilkinson and Pickett supply to make their case is overwhelming. Whether 
> the test is life expectancy, infant mortality, obesity levels, crime 
> rates, literacy scores, even the amount of rubbish that gets recycled, the 
> more equal the society the better the performance invariably is."  --CGE
>
>
> Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>> Most intelligent and educated people, not necessarily including "people 
>> of
>> faith", realize that the earth and its resources for life and humanity 
>> are
>> finite, and see evidence all around them that a limiting of population 
>> will
>> be ultimately necessary, willy-nilly. Wars and/or pestilence, climate 
>> change,
>> etc. may do the trick. The Chinese leaders and now even those in India 
>> know
>> this, and are trying to act on it. They do not need, or want, more 
>> people. We
>> are worrying about where our next kilowatt may be coming from—and at what
>> price, what is happening to living species—aquatic, wildlife, how we are
>> affecting the climate, you name it.
>>
>> Should we contemplate an earth of 50 billion people? How about a USA of 2
>> billion people? How will those people feed themselves, care for 
>> themselves,
>> from farms on Mars? From voyages to outer space? The problems we have 
>> now, in
>> almost all domains, will only worsen with increasing population; from the
>> evidence we have, that seems obvious, but unfortunately not to some.
>>
>> We know a lot more now then we knew in Malthus' times, and Ehrlich may 
>> have
>> been wrong in his specifics, but not in his understanding.
>>
>> Obviously, the lower economic strata will suffer the most. Those in the 
>> upper
>> strata may survive, but will find their isolated and private vacation 
>> spots
>> increasingly hard to locate.
>>
>> In effect, this article is crap, and hardly amusing. It goes along with 
>> the
>> campaign to limit women's freedom, as for example in our current debate 
>> about
>> health care for all. Carl, of course, is an exponent of this point of 
>> view.
>>
>> --mkb
>>
>>
>> On Nov 23, 2009, at 11:47 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>
>>> "Since 200 AD, scaremongers have been describing human beings as
>>> ‘burdensome to the world’. They were wrong then, and they’re still wrong
>>> today."
>>>
>>> Thursday 19 November 2009 Too many people? No, too many Malthusians 
>>> Brendan
>>> O’Neill
>>>
>>> [Last week, on 12 November, spiked editor Brendan O’Neill debated Roger
>>> Martin, chairman of the Optimum Population Trust, at the Wellcome
>>> Collection in London. To kick off spiked’s campaign against
>>> neo-Malthusianism and all forms of population control, O’Neill’s speech 
>>> is
>>> published below.]
>>>
>>> In the year 200 AD, there were approximately 180million human beings on 
>>> the
>>> planet Earth. And at that time a Christian philosopher called Tertullian
>>> argued: ‘We are burdensome to the world, the resources are scarcely
>>> adequate for us… already nature does not sustain us.’ In other words, 
>>> there
>>> were too many people for the planet to cope with and we were bleeding
>>> Mother Nature dry. [WORTH NOTING THAT TERTULLIAN WAS A KNOWN CRANK AMONG
>>> THE CHURCH FATHERS --CGE]
>>>
>>> Well today, nearly 180million people live in the Eastern Half of the 
>>> United
>>> States alone, in the 26 states that lie to the east of the Mississippi
>>> River. And far from facing hunger or destitution, many of these people –
>>> especially the 1.7million who live on the tiny island of Manhattan – 
>>> have
>>> quite nice lives.
>>>
>>> In the early 1800s, there were approximately 980million human beings on 
>>> the
>>> planet Earth. One of them was the population scaremonger Thomas Malthus,
>>> who argued that if too many more people were born then ‘premature death
>>> would visit mankind’ – there would be food shortages, ‘epidemics,
>>> pestilence and plagues’, which would ‘sweep off tens of thousands [of
>>> people]’.
>>>
>>> Well today, more than the entire world population of Malthus’s era now
>>> lives in China alone: there are 1.3billion human beings in China. And 
>>> far
>>> from facing pestilence, plagues and starvation, the living standards of
>>> many Chinese have improved immensely over the past few decades. In 1949
>>> life expectancy in China was 36.5 years; today it is 73.4 years. In 1978
>>> China had 193 cities; today it has 655 cities. Over the past 30 years,
>>> China has raised a further 235million of its citizens out of absolute
>>> poverty – a remarkable historic leap forward for humanity.
>>>
>>> In 1971 there were approximately 3.6billion human beings on the planet
>>> Earth. And at that time Paul Ehrlich, a patron of the Optimum Population
>>> Trust and author of a book called The Population Bomb, wrote about his
>>> ‘shocking’ visit to New Delhi in India. He said: ‘The streets seemed 
>>> alive
>>> with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People
>>> visiting, arguing, screaming. People thrusting their hands through the 
>>> taxi
>>> window, begging. People defecating and urinating. People clinging to 
>>> buses.
>>> People herding animals. People, people, people, people. As we moved 
>>> slowly
>>> through the mob, [we wondered] would we ever get to our hotel…?’
>>>
>>> You’ll be pleased to know that Paul Ehrlich did make it to his hotel,
>>> through the mob of strange brown people shitting in the streets, and he
>>> later wrote in his book that as a result of overpopulation ‘hundreds of
>>> millions of people will starve to death’. He said India couldn’t 
>>> possibly
>>> feed all its people and would experience some kind of collapse around 
>>> 1980.
>>>
>>>
>>> Well today, the world population is almost double what it was in 1971 –
>>> then it was 3.6billion, today it is 6.7billion – and while there are 
>>> still
>>> social problems of poverty and malnutrition, hundreds of millions of 
>>> people
>>> are not starving to death. As for India, she is doing quite well for
>>> herself. When Ehrlich was writing in 1971 there were 550million people 
>>> in
>>> India; today there are 1.1billion. Yes there’s still poverty, but 
>>> Indians
>>> are not starving; in fact India has made some important economic and 
>>> social
>>> leaps forward and both life expectancy and living standards have 
>>> improved
>>> in that vast nation.
>>>
>>> What this potted history of population scaremongering ought to 
>>> demonstrate
>>> is this: Malthusians are always wrong about everything.
>>>
>>> The extent of their wrongness cannot be overstated. They have 
>>> continually
>>> claimed that too many people will lead to increased hunger and 
>>> destitution,
>>> yet the precise opposite has happened: world population has risen
>>> exponentially over the past 40 years and in the same period a great many
>>> people’s living standards and life expectancies have improved 
>>> enormously.
>>> Even in the Third World there has been improvement – not nearly enough, 
>>> of
>>> course, but improvement nonetheless. The lesson of history seems to be 
>>> that
>>> more and more people are a good thing; more and more minds to think and
>>> hands to create have made new cities, more resources, more things, and 
>>> seem
>>> to have given rise to healthier and wealthier societies.
>>>
>>> Yet despite this evidence, the population scaremongers always draw 
>>> exactly
>>> the opposite conclusion. Never has there been a political movement that 
>>> has
>>> got things so spectacularly wrong time and time again yet which keeps on
>>> rearing its ugly head and saying: ‘This time it’s definitely going to
>>> happen! This time overpopulation is definitely going to cause social and
>>> political breakdown!’
>>>
>>> There is a reason Malthusians are always wrong. It isn’t because they’re
>>> stupid… well, it might be a little bit because they’re stupid. But more
>>> fundamentally it is because, while they present their views as 
>>> fact-based
>>> and scientific, in reality they are driven by a deeply held misanthropy
>>> that continually overlooks mankind’s ability to overcome problems and
>>> create new worlds.
>>>
>>> The language used to justify population scaremongering has changed
>>> dramatically over the centuries. In the time of Malthus in the 
>>> eighteenth
>>> century the main concern was with the fecundity of poor people. In the
>>> early twentieth century there was a racial and eugenic streak to
>>> population-reduction arguments. Today they have adopted environmentalist
>>> language to justify their demands for population reduction.
>>>
>>> The fact that the presentational arguments can change so fundamentally 
>>> over
>>> time, while the core belief in ‘too many people’ remains the same, 
>>> really
>>> shows that this is a prejudicial outlook in search of a social or
>>> scientific justification; it is prejudice looking around for the latest
>>> trendy ideas to clothe itself in. And that is why the population
>>> scaremongers have been wrong over and over again: because behind the new
>>> language they adopt every few decades, they are really driven by
>>> narrow-mindedness, by disdain for mankind’s breakthroughs, by wilful
>>> ignorance of humanity’s ability to shape its surroundings and its 
>>> future.
>>>
>>> The first mistake Malthusians always make is to underestimate how 
>>> society
>>> can change to embrace more and more people. They make the schoolboy
>>> scientific error of imagining that population is the only variable, the
>>> only thing that grows and grows, while everything else – including 
>>> society,
>>> progress and discovery – stays roughly the same. That is why Malthus was
>>> wrong: he thought an overpopulated planet would run out of food because 
>>> he
>>> could not foresee how the industrial revolution would massively 
>>> transform
>>> society and have an historic impact on how we produce and transport food
>>> and many other things. Population is not the only variable – mankind’s
>>> vision, growth, his ability to rethink and tackle problems: they are
>>> variables, too.
>>>
>>> The second mistake Malthusians always make is to imagine that resources 
>>> are
>>> fixed, finite things that will inevitably run out. They don’t recognise
>>> that what we consider to be a resource changes over time, depending on 
>>> how
>>> advanced society is. That is why the Christian Tertullian was wrong in 
>>> 200
>>> AD when he said ‘the resources are scarcely adequate for us’. Because 
>>> back
>>> then pretty much the only resources were animals, plants and various
>>> metals. Tertullian could not imagine that, in the future, the oceans, 
>>> oil
>>> and uranium would become resources, too. The nature of resources changes 
>>> as
>>> society changes – what we consider to be a resource today might not be 
>>> one
>>> in the future, because other, better, more easily-exploited resources 
>>> will
>>> hopefully be discovered or created. Today’s cult of the finite, the
>>> discussion of the planet as a larder of scarce resources that human 
>>> beings
>>> are using up, really speaks to finite thinking, to a lack of
>>> future-oriented imagination.
>>>
>>> And the third and main mistake Malthusians always make is to 
>>> underestimate
>>> the genius of mankind. Population scaremongering springs from a
>>> fundamentally warped view of human beings as simply consumers, simply 
>>> the
>>> users of resources, simply the destroyers of things, as a kind of 
>>> ‘plague’
>>> on poor Mother Nature, when in fact human beings are first and foremost
>>> producers, the discoverers and creators of resources, the makers of 
>>> things
>>> and the makers of history. Malthusians insultingly refer to newborn 
>>> babies
>>> as ‘another mouth to feed’, when in the real world another human being 
>>> is
>>> another mind that can think, another pair of hands that can work, and
>>> another person who has needs and desires that ought to be met.
>>>
>>> We don’t merely use up finite resources; we create infinite ideas and
>>> possibilities. The 6.7billion people on Earth have not raped and 
>>> destroyed
>>> this planet, we have humanised it. And given half a chance – given a
>>> serious commitment to overcoming poverty and to pursuing progress – we
>>> would humanise it even further. Just as you wouldn’t listen to that guy 
>>> who
>>> wears a placard saying ‘The End of the World is Nigh’ if he walked up to
>>> you and said ‘this time it really is nigh’, so you shouldn’t listen to 
>>> the
>>> always-wrong Malthusians. Instead, join spiked in opposing the 
>>> population
>>> panickers.
>>>
>>> Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked. His satire on the green movement - 
>>> Can
>>> I Recycle My Granny and 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas - is published by Hodder &
>>> Stoughton. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) The above is an edited 
>>> extract
>>> of a speech given at the Wellcome Collection in London on Thursday 12
>>> November.
>>>
>>> reprinted from: 
>>> http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7723/ 
>>> _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing 
>>> list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net 
>>> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>>
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