I see people saying things like this, seemingly as a matter of faith, but there is nothing that makes it so, automatically.
Further, the Luddites haven’t said this since the invention of the wheel but since when, well, they actually existed, the 19th century:
We’ve had 200 years pass since this time with many upheavals in society and the economy. We have a sample size of 1 for determining how the technology we have now will affect the future (i.e., we can’t look at societies on other planets to see how things turned out). Thus, I find confidence that everything will be fine to be unjustified.
They would certainly notice the massive improvement in available habitat.
I don’t know that they’d notice the eventual massive decrease in pollution exactly, as what we’d probably first have if almost everybody disappeared would be a brief massive increase in it due to failure of ameliorating systems which would go unattended. But that would happen, in time.
Can we accomplish drastically reducing pollution and increasing habitat for other species while still having a fairly high human population? Very likely, to the extent that we put our minds (and our hands and wallets) to it. Can we accomplish that with a human population that increases every year, forever? No; and eventually we’ll strangle ourselves. The time until such strangulation may be a whole lot further off than we thought in the 1970’s, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
Meh. Urban raccoons would have to actually hunt/gather for a living instead of raiding dumpsters, ditto bears in state and national parks. There would likely be fewer rats and mice. Probably other examples - all those local backyard bird feeders would empty quickly and there might be fewer little birds due to fewer food resources easily available. And so on.
I work in automation. The pace in which we are automating our lives is not the break neck race popular fiction would like you to believe. (“Things are progressing slowly” is an article that won’t get many clicks)
We call Luddites such since the 19th century, but the sentiment has existed since Ungah brought home the first flaming branch : Bungah didn’t want nothing to do with this newfangled “hot food” and kept eating his meat raw as his elders intended.
We are facing many problems: a shortage of jobs ain’t one. Worry about the climate, an aging population (the exact opposite problem), diseases in the increasingly narrowing gene pool of life around us, water shortages, pollution, etc.
Those bird feeders are partially, and not entirely, making up for the loss of food due to land being built upon, paved, turned into single-species lawns, and put into monocrop agriculture.
It’s true that some species would benefit more than others.
People tend to think about this as a global issue, whereas it is both global and local.
Japan is a country that I lived in for 8 years. It’s not doing well with depopulation, and no “better quality of life” is in the works. Already in Japan, 25% of people are 65 or older. By 2050, Japan is projected to go from 120 to 80 million people, at which point 40% will be 65 or older.
The country is in a demographic death spiral. As in most mature economies, young people feel that kids are basically unaffordable–and they’re right. The country is pretty much run for the sake of old people and their needs, which does nothing to encourage young people to procreate. At the same time, the country is not particularly enthusiastic about immigration (though some laws were changed relatively recently to make things easier). I can’t really blame Japan for feeling that way. If a significant number of immigrants came to Japan, I think the culture and language would be toast in a couple of generations.
It depends on what you value. There are people who tackle this issue with a blithe assertion that humans are only hurting the planet in the first place. I disagree–humans are what have value, and so do cultures and civilization in general. While I’m not the type to decry the death of every little language variant and all that, I do think that losing Japan as a viable culture will be a significant loss to humanity.
I think there are several issues in Japan, as you point out. However, few people are more ingenious. Some problems come from a desire not to make needed changes to their political and social systems, and this may not be sustainable. It is a very homogenous culture and is not in serious danger of losing its language or the bulk of its values. Immigration would be limited, would attract people largely already enamoured with Japanese methods, and would not have this result.
At some point the Japanese will face harder choices to deal with demographic concerns. The birth rate has fallen in many countries once they have tasted prosperity - not just Japan. Other countries also struggle with young people preferring urban to rural life, politicians catering to older generations, and conformity of thought. Japan has the advantages of wealth, good infrastructure, reputation for quality, interesting (though currently confining) history and tradition, being a cool and desirable place to live… they will find solutions but these will require compromise.
No, I’m actually a spiritual person who thinks the Gaia hypothesis is more or less true. I think we should value the environment and its plants and animals.
But when I hear people speak so negatively about humans, I think, “That’s an atheist talking.” Because I think spiritual people in general realize the value in humans. But if I was making a false assumption, that’s on me, and I apologize.
My guess is that Gaia would feel that things hadn’t quite worked out ideally if humans were to go extinct, but she is resourceful, and perhaps another species would evolve to take our place.
I think we’ve had an understandable learning curve. We were not handed an instruction manual when we became who we are some 200,000 years ago. We’ve learned (more or less) that killing and exploitation are bad when it comes to our fellow humans, and I think we’re finally seeing how this “stewards of the planet” thing is supposed to work, and I think we’ll do better.
Which is why, although I strongly favor a gradual decrease, I see lots of problems with a rapid one. The relatively smaller younger population will be unable to support the older one as the older people become less able to work – and any extra burden put on each individual person young enough to have children makes them less likely to be willing to have children.
This may be an imminent or current problem for Japan, but it isn’t world-wide – planetary population is still increasing. But it appears, from current experience in a number of countries, that in order to prevent population from dropping way too fast for comfort including eventually planet-wide, it’s necessary to either force women to have more children than they want, or to encourage women to want to have more children than will happen in a 21st century country which has accessible birth control, education of women, and the expectation that all working-age adults in a family will contribute to the family’s finances through paid work, which is also the only kind of work fully respected.
I think the latter is possible, and possible without forbidding birth control or limiting women’s access to education; but it’ll require a major societal shift, including a major shift of both attitudes and resources. I’m afraid that what we’ll actually get will be, in one way or another, nasty.
Depending on just how it gets nasty, we may do even more environmental damage on our way down. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea to reduce human population; it just means it’s only a good idea to do so gradually.
Including the ones who expect most humans to be tortured throughout eternity?
Valuing humans isn’t an atheist/religious divide. There are plenty in both categories who value humans, and those who don’t. I think the species is definitely worth saving. That doesn’t mean that we’re guaranteed to pull it off. I think our chances of doing so are massively better if we can somehow get it through our heads that there’s such a thing as enough; and that this includes that there’s such a thing as enough humans.
Yeah, we’re gaining on it. Almost nobody tortures people to death in the public square any longer, bringing their children to join in the fun. And we’ve realized that we can make a species disappear, and many of us have realized that this probably isn’t a good thing to do very often.
I don’t know whether we’re gaining on it fast enough. Probably not, but maybe. I don’t have a lot of hope; but I do have some.
Please apologize. We atheists believe that spiritual people, a mealy-mouthed euphemism for self-congratulating religious bigots, are the source of 99% of the world’s ills.
Just FYI, I do not speak negatively about humans. Except those who are anti-atheist.
I don’t think we’re seeing this ingenuity at work in Japan. A large percentage of people there remember the 1980s, when Japan was at its peak and everything it was doing seemed to be working. It went from that to being in rough shape in a very short period of time. I first went there in 1992 (the bubble had popped in 1989), and there was still no consensus as to what had happened or what the future held. Now we know: not a lot that was positive. It’s really been more change than humans can be expected to handle.
Japan is not in danger of losing these things so long as immigration is limited.
I must humbly but strenuously disagree.
The Japanese language is difficult for Japanese people too. Kids in high school, having learned as many kanji as they have, still find it challenging to read a newspaper. My own daughter, who is very intelligent, has totally crap Japanese ability after living there for over four years with my Japanese ex (who has also spoken to her in Japanese since she was born). She sees herself as American and has no interest in learning the language. I have a Japanese colleague who raised her daughter in the US, and it’s the same thing: Japanese ability 0.
Any language that uses hanzi/kanji is not efficient to learn, and history will eventually phase them out. Japan is in danger of having this happen sooner rather than later. Very few immigrants, however much they may like anime and okonomiyaki, have the ability to learn Japanese at any level other than “total shit.” That’s true of any language, really, but the writing system of Japanese just presents just that much bigger of a hurdle.
And that’s just the language.
If Japan tries to take any significant number of immigrants, they will be a separate society within the society, and they won’t assimilate. That’s already true, so you will just be growing this separate society until the whole thing gets flipped, and you have a new globalist society living in Japan with the oldies fading into the background. I don’t see any other way it happens, really.
Yeah, but looked at from the other end of the telescope, the question arises, “Why is a society with so many advantages so incapable of change–and what hope is there for societies with fewer such advantages?”
I don’t think there is hope of preserving such cultures. The US works because we have made a point, often violently, recklessly, and unethically, of assimilating lots of different people under a language that is easy to begin learning but difficult to master (somewhat the polar opposite of Japanese) and that also happens to now be the global lingua franca. If we keep doing what we are doing, we still get to be “America” (pace the white supremacists), but a lot of cultures are not set up for this.
The difference between you and me is simply the difference between optimism and pessimism. Studies have shown that while optimists are happier than pessimists, pessimists are far more often right.
Aren’t we talking about, say, the year 2100 here? Neither optimists nor pessimists have any understanding of what populations will be at that time. Fertility rates today are interesting, but don’t take account of immigration.
Immigration will happen. Climate change alone will probably drive at least a billion people out of their countries as they grow uninhabitable. Countries will change their immigration policies because they will be forced to. Sure, wars, slaughter, and artificial barriers will be seen, but the force of a billion people is unstoppable. The world will change, in unpredictable ways, except that simple extrapolation is the one way certain not to happen.
The other certainty is that, given the choice between protecting themselves and protecting anything else, humans will protect humans. Is anything else sentient? We’ll find out if they fight back.
You have a lot of personal experience in Japan which I do not. But Japan was forced to make significant changes following a world war and at other times in its long history. It is true their written language is difficult. It is true, reportedly, that immigrants have reportedly not been fully welcomed into the Japanese fold. Even ethnic Japanese immigrants from abroad are treated differently, I have been told. And it is true their system has long emphasized care of the elderly by the young which does not seem sustainable in its current form, with current trends.
But it is not a given that these facts will not eventually influence Japanese thought. A lack of alternatives might clarify minds even if consensus is unlikely.
Other countries have made major changes to their language. Other countries treated various waves of immigrants as second-class citizens but learned inclusivity. Other countries have made use of their diasporas despite ambivalence and.even antipathy. Other countries have been able to devise helpful incentives and give younger citizens a say. The language and culture and systems are capable of change and evolution. It may not be easy, or popular, or without issues. But it is possible. And it is better to choose (how to make progress) than to lose (values one holds dear). Progress is often made not by elderly people greatly changing individual views, but by newer generations thinking in different ways.
If you’ve ever wondered why the population’s going down Blame it on the plunder from the likes of the killer klowns From outer space Killer klowns From outer space