I posted the blog below as a response to another thread but it seemed good enough and perhaps controversial enough where I thought it deserved a blog of its own.
I am 50 years old and among my earliest memories are my parents exhorting me to eat my dinner because there were starving children in Ethiopia. In the ensuing years the famines have moved around. I had a geography teacher in 7th grade who went to India and told of dead people by the hundreds laying in the streets every morning. The famines have hit China and they have hit various other parts of Asia and to a limited extent South America and ALWAYS Africa.
Always during those years we have been exhorted to give help and aide. And we have. We have poured money and food into these regions for all of my life and it probably began substantially before that. The end result of all that is that the problem is probably worse then it has ever been. Our aid makes the problem worse, not better. In those 50 years the population of the earth has grown by billions and the population is currently growing by 70 million people per year and almost all of that growth is happening in the parts of the world that can least afford it.
Over the millenniums, human populations have generally been in harmony with the carrying capacity of the environment as adjusted for the available technology. When human populations have exceeded carrying capacity, mother nature has stepped in and sharply whacked it back into balance in ways best described by Dr Malthus. Over time, because nobody likes watching their children starve, cultures develop traditions and values that keep their populations in check. For example, hunter-gatherers practice prolonged lactation to decrease fertility and also have long taboos against sex after child birth. Agrarian societies favor larger families. But they often practice infanticide against twins and females. Urban societies use modern birth control and abortion. In earlier times they resorted to crusades, colonialism, emigration and forced transportation to keep population in check. The result is that human culture causes populations to be in balance with their environment. To a large extent they have invented technology that expanded the carrying capacity of their environment.
Obviously in Africa, culture is not in harmony with the environment. It was probably whacked badly out of balance by the double whammy of colonialism and collision with modernity. It turns out that culture, by its very nature is extremely enduring and difficult to change. Child bearing habits that worked 400 years ago in Africa are a calamity today. It requires painful Malthusian experiences to convince people to change their traditions and their values. The right prescription to bring about the required cultural shift is tough love. I believe that by constantly bailing out people and saving them from the consequences of their own behaviors that have led to their massively excess populations, we have short circuited the badly needed Malthusian pain that would have led to the cultural shift that would bring population back into harmony with the environment.
If 50 years ago we had let nature run its course, there would be literally be billions of less people on earth now. Less mouths to feed and less people contributing to the degradation of the environment. The problem would have been largely solved except for our misguided compassion. That is water under the bridge. Looking forwards we should learn from our past errors and we need to take care that our compassion and generosity today and in the future does not make the problem worse and condemn future generations of literally billions of yet unborn babies to even worse misery then their parents are experiencing now.
In the past, the excess production capability of the USA, where we have mastered the art of transforming fossil fuels into food, has been able to offset some of the misery resulting from over population elsewhere in the world. The recent food shortages, (caused partly by our current practice of converting food into fossil fuels) should serve as a wake-up call that we are reaching the limits. With the earth's population projected to grow by 2 billion over the next century, it should be clear that generosity now is going to lead to untold misery in the future. We need to bring population into check and the only way that is going to happen is with tough love.
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I think you hit it on the head.
"my first name must be, "He aint sh@t", cause everytime I come through, yall be like "He aint sh@t"!....I'll be dat" --Redman
"Anything that can go wrong, Will go wrong"----Murphy's Law
It is a tough subject. Allowing people to starve today to prevent far worse starvation in the future is not a moral decion that most people can countenance. It is a moral dilema.
One of my best friends is a wildlife biologist. Here in Wyoming we have had several mild winters in a row and the deer population has expanded beyond what our normally harsh environment will support. Probably sooner rather than later we will get a really harsh winter and it will be a really sad deal. People will be watching the deer move into town to strip their shrubs and then they will watch them die in a most miserable way. Some people will feel compelled to feed them. Most will agree with my biologist friend and agree that this is the wrong moral choice and that nature should be allowed to run its course and bring the population back into balance with the carrying capacity of the environment. It is an easier choice with deer then with people.
I chose the tough love analogy because I spent 10 years married to a hopeless alcoholic. For most of that marriage which ended a dozen years ago I could have been fairly described as an "enabler". It wasn't until near the end of the relationship that I learned that the only way to help her was to let her wallow in the consequences of her own misery. She will finish killing herself before too long now. When she does, I will have to face the fact and carry the guilt that if I had given her the tough love that might have helped her much earlier in our relationship, the disease might not have progressed to the point where she was beyond help.
Sometimes the loving and morally correct thing to do is nothing.
Your wildlife biologist friend is correct about the deer population. I being in Wisconsin know the dangers of overpopulation of deer, but, however, we are talking about people and not animals. These people have the same right to life as we do, and who are we to decide to withdraw help and watch them die.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/nharris1032
There is way to many people in this world. The over population leads to more devestation. And, more early deaths in Africa and every other poor country.
Dig the social Darwinism.
Coal is to shaving as nuclear power is to waxing. For the time being, they are both relatively cheaper options, and each is a fast fix to the energy problem. Now, factor global warming back in --"Hairy Sustainability" by A-squared, a ProU blogger
I usually think of Social Darwinism in terms of capitalism with the most fit individual climbing to the top of the econimic heap.
But I suppose the phrase fits here too. I am hoping that Malthusian pain will cause these cultures to evolve in ways that will make the pain stop and that they will adapt cultural traits which include reproductive habits that spare them the horror of watching generation after generation starve.
It has an element of real Darwinism in it too because this will be a very tough environment and only the strongest and smartest will survive it.
Yep, I've gotta hand it to you. Population constraint not an easy issue to write about. That said, I think we can translate the compassion you mentioned into a more meaningful cultural evolution through the public education that "increase awareness of population issues and advance policies to achieve universal access to family planning information, education and methods." The Population Institute said that.
Coal is to shaving as nuclear power is to waxing. For the time being, they are both relatively cheaper options, and each is a fast fix to the energy problem. Now, factor global warming back in --"Hairy Sustainability" by A-squared, a ProU blogger
I'm all for watching you try. The vast majority of the world's people along with living in extreme poverty also live in extreme ignorance. They take their guidance on how to behave from their cultural traditions. If we can educate them to stop having babies at an irresponsible rate I am all for that. That would be the kind of cultural shift that is needed. But I don't think it is going to happen. In most of the Muslim world education rates are rising simultaneously with the birthrate. I can't even imagine an educational strategy that is going to change that.
No one said it was to be a downhill descent.
Coal is to shaving as nuclear power is to waxing. For the time being, they are both relatively cheaper options, and each is a fast fix to the energy problem. Now, factor global warming back in --"Hairy Sustainability" by A-squared, a ProU blogger
Although your idea is good in theory, its practicality is virtually null. You spoke of tough love. Tough love is an under-statement of taking billions of people off the planet. This is mass genocide! What makes you (not just you, anyone who believes in not giving money to 3rd world countries, don't misconstrue this as a personal attack) so much better than these Africans and other starving people. It was just dumb luck that you weren't born there. We must give more than money and get these countries on the right path.
However, I agree with your tough love idea for the poor and homeless in the USA, who have had the same opportunities in life to lead a successful life.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/nharris1032
Where I was born was just dumb luck. My parents were apparently messing around and about 9 months later I popped out in America. I was born in 1958 near the tail-end of the baby boom and was the second of 5 children.
I am not making judgement about these people. Rather I am observing the human condidtion from the disspassionate view of a scientist. Humans are just animals and like all other animals, populations numbers cycle up and down.
Like other animals, humans have population control methods. Lemmings periodically commit mass suicide by jumping by the millions into the sea. Humans control their population by developing cultural behaviors.
I am not talking about genociding anybody. That would be an active behavior. I am talking about passively allowing nature to run its course which is an entirely different thing then genocide.
I think it is totally understandable that you find my position morally questionable. I feel a little queezy about it myself. But then I consider which is worse? Passively letting millions starve now or actively partaking in activities that will lead to the starvation of billions in a few years.
I've made my decision but I won't presume to make that moral choice for you. All I want people to do is think about it.