Dear Cecil,
It is an axiom of the modern era that preventing and curing diseases is for the good of humanity. Especially in the light of the horrific consequences of the Nazi employment of eugenics, questioning this is a naturally emotive issue. But with a burgeoning human population and limited resources available to us, is the preservation of human life always a good idea?
Best wishes
Mike Tatham (St. Andrews Scotland)
If we lived as nature intended we’d live short, brutal and painful lives.
The worst case scenario is going back to this (OK, extinction is worse yet, but we have little reason to suppose that is likely soon).
OTOH, are you simply advocating Eugenics here (the OP was a little confusing for me)? If so, could you flesh out a little more what kind of eugenics you have in mind?
It’s not always a good idea, but surprisingly enough the partisans of enforced population control rarely, if ever, include themselves or their loved ones in the body of humans wot oughta be culled.
Funny, that.
Not that I’m a fan of “eugenics” or whatever, but, cite?
I think the socially acceptable way to control population count is by limiting births *, not by shortening lives. Eugenics (selection of desired traits in offspring) seems a different subject entirely.
Heck, I understood that the consensus among demographers was a likely stabilizing of world population at around nine billion later this century. Not exactly the runaway-train-meets-the-four-horsemen scenario the OP suggests.
The problem is that it’s natural for humans to be unnatural, so where do you draw the line?
Agreed. At this point in my life my instincts can tell me lots about queries, computer code, and web pages. They are part of my nature. Making spears is not, but it could be.
Our nature is adapt through learning.
If you were right, wouldn’t nature take care of it anyway? As it happens you’re not right because the human population is not going to go up and up indefinitely; as societies develop their birth rates go down. So we don’t need to stop curing diseases or taking care of sick or disabled people. There’s another discussion of these issues here.
I draw the line at human efforts that in reality do harm humans. **But what it is important to notice here is that there are many examples of lines that were already drawn and modern civilization did not stop. **
I mention “in reality” because many times it is not apparent at first that one result of our efforts was sending humanity down the toilet.
For example, in this case, I’m referring about the development of that unnatural place known as the modern city, and their early lack of a sewer system. (And in this case it was the Europeans that forgot about them as some ancient civilizations had systems to deal with human refuse)
So as cholera and other diseases began to kill many in the cities it was found later, thanks to science, that “bad air” was not the reason for the diseases, but the lack of a system that could take the human refuse away from drinking water sources (and then treat the black waters before releasing them). It was indeed expensive at first, but the fact that many diseases are a thing of the past shows how it was the right decision in the long run, and the right economical decision to boot.
That example is used by Professor Richard Alley to make the point that in the matter of global warming it will indeed be worse for humans to delay doing something now about us treating the atmosphere as a sewer for our emitted CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
(Short Video)
In fact, most of the developed world is experiencing population decline. Due to demographics, it may not hit some states until 2030. Others, there is also immigration to keep population up.
The problem appears to be economic. We have the ability to prevent pregnancy or terminate it. Children cost a huge amount of money and are not “profitable” or even serious money earners for 20+ years, so you really really have to want them in today’s society. A family of more than 2 is huge and unusual nowadays; contrast this with developing countries where 5 to 10 children are the norm, and even after childhood mortality in many countries, half the population is under 25.
The most interesting society is China, which in about 40 years is due for a serious, serious population decline as all those single-child-of-single-children families start to become the dominant population. The oldest society is Japan, where hostility to immigration means they are not getting enough workers to replace the retired.
So if you are worried about the number of people on earth, don’t worry. Just wait 50 years.
The OP appears to still believe in the Population Bomb nonsense (although appropriately I saw that book in the humour section of the used book store on Saturday).
The bigger problem is our increasingly aging population which is increasingly dooming the welfare state.
Throw in a significant gender imbalance and times will be interesting, indeed.
If you want to see what a society in demographic decline looks like have a browse through the Spike Japanblog. It’s a fascnitaing look at all sorts of odd corners of Japan which have been run down and abandoned as the local populaiton dwindles.
I had occasion to reread the novel Make Room! Make Room!, written in 1966, which postulated that the entire world would resemble Calcutta by the end of the 20th century. I’d say that the “Population Bomb” was sort of like the Millenium Computer Crash: something we avoided because it was so widely warned of.
It was just an inevitable product of liberal capitalism raising the standard of living around the world.
Humans are funny. As we get better at hitting one mole, we create others.
We don’t have to worry about small pox and cholera, but we do have to worry about second-hand smoke and trans fats.
We’re on high alert for lead paint in our houses, but we look the other way when it comes to bisphenol-As and PCBs in our foods…as we wait for scientists to render a judgment on these and other substances.
Psychotropic drugs have probably rescued millions of people from life-debilitating mental illness, and yet how many more people are depressed, anxious, ADHD’d, psychotic, bipolar etc. because they are drugs? Or trying to cope with a ton of anthropogenic stressors they just aren’t genetically suited for…that no one could reasonably be expected to be suited for?
Cars are great, but look at how many lives are taken by them every year. The invention of cell phones just upped the number.
I have no doubt that humans will continue to find ways to kill themselves in the absence of “natural” means.
Despite this, death rates are going down while life-spans are increasing. Plus how many people in the past before automobiles got run down by horses or died from exposure while walking in the cold weather?
If nature had such things as intentions.
As one royal rodent to another … is the stench really that bad?