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Archived pages

A repository of old, archived pages that are mostly outdated for me (such as old opinion pages), but might be of some interest still. I have put everything on this page, so it is quite long! (Inevitably, some older external links will be broken/unavailable.)

Likes and dislikes

Listings of some of my favorite things, likes and dislikes. For some I have linked to mostly Wikipedia articles for more details.

Likes

Dislikes

Updated: 7/6/2018

New World Order

Sometimes I get very frustrated with all the things I see as wrong in the world and fantasize about what I would do to remedy them if I had the power (or was magically given such power). This page is a place for those ideas! Some of these are not politically-correct, and my version of ruling the world seems to be rather autocratic! Which is necessary to enforce this New (and hopefully better) World Order. I am only focusing on issues I feel strongly about. Humanity is destroying the environment of the planet it resides on and is approaching a point of no return, so radical measures are needed to change things.

This is a somewhat disorganized work-in-progress, so some ideas are only briefly noted so far.

Political Zones

One of my dislikes is nationalism, which has reached ridiculous proportions in the world and is a cause of wars. At some point the U.N. has to say “Enough! No more nations!”.

The continents are to be divided up into Zones, with each nation part of a Zone – similar to how states in a nation operate, or the European Union. Each nation will still keep its cultural identity and borders, but will politically be subservient to the Zone it is in (which itself answers to the United Nations World Government). Looking at this political world map (bigger world maps can be downloaded from this page at the CIA World Factbook site), the continents can roughly be divided into:

North American Zone
USA, Canada, Alaska, Greenland.
South American Zone
Every country from Mexico southwards.
African Zone
Egypt westwards (i.e. the African continent).
Middle Eastern Zone
Saudi Arabia to Iran and Turkey.
European Zone
All European countries.
Russian Zone
Russia plus Ukraine and Belarus (countries westward are part of the European zone).
Central Asian Zone
Central Asian countries plus India.
South-East Asian Zone
China, Mongolia, plus other remaining Asian countries on the continent (including Japan) and Indonesia.
Asia-Pacific Zone
Australia, New Zealand, plus all the island countries.
Antarctic Zone
Antarctica. A neutral environmental Zone; only scientific research activities allowed. Access strictly limited. The territorial divisions are to be abolished.

That makes 10 Zones; much simpler! And if countries don’t like it, too bad! This assumes the United Nations becomes a sort of World Government with real powers. The divisions are deliberately not too dissimilar to how the world tends to be informally divided anyway, so most countries in each Zone have some cultural similarities. There would also be no colonies, and no nation or Zone is permitted to have military bases in others (*cough* USA *cough*).

United Nations World Government

The United Nations is to be transformed into a World Government, with the power to overrule individual nations. Representatives from each Zone (9 Zones) has a seat at the Security Council; individual nations in each Zone will get a representative elected in turn.

The Secretary-General serves as the final decision-maker, and he or she is in effect a de facto World Leader – effectively performing much the same role as the current S-G but with more power – but decisions are still voted on by the other members. Each S-G is selected from a Zone in turn, serving for one period of 4 years.

The United Nations peacekeepers will be given full military powers to quell any conflicts in the Zones.

A dysfunctional government may be temporarily taken over by U.N. peacekeepers until the government is restored to normal.

All nuclear weapons are to be transferred to the U.N., who will have the ultimate authority to deploy them.

Government

The European socialist democracy model seems to be a reasonably balanced style of government; it is neither pure Communism nor capitalism but somewhere in between. The government provides free health care, public education, transport and infrastructure, and a basic level of support to its citizens. There is a free market to provide goods but it is regulated by laws. Each Zone has this style of government, its members comprising elected representatives from the nations within each Zone.

A book (which I haven’t read) called The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy postulates that a liberal democracy is ill-suited for meeting the crisis of climate change.

But there is a third way between democracy and authoritarianism that the authors leave for the final chapter. Having brought the reader to the realization that in order to halt or even slow the disastrous process of climate change we must choose between liberal democracy and a form of authoritarian government by experts, the authors offer up a radical reform of democracy that would entail the painful choice of curtailing our worldwide reliance on growth economies, along with various legal and fiscal reforms. Unpalatable as this choice may be, they argue for the adoption of this fundamental reform of democracy over the journey to authoritarianism.
— Review source

Liberal democracy is sweet and addictive and indeed in the most extreme case, the USA, unbridled individual liberty overwhelms many of the collective needs of the citizens. The subject is almost sacrosanct and those who indulge in criticism are labeled as Marxists, socialists, fundamentalists and worse. These labels are used because alternatives to democracy cannot be perceived! Support for Western democracy is messianic as proselytised by a President leading a flawed democracy.

There must be open minds to look critically at liberal democracy. Reform must involve the adoption of structures to act quickly regardless of some perceived liberties. It is not that liberal democracy cannot react once it sees a threat, for example, the speedy response to a recent international financial emergency. If governments can recognise a financial emergency and in an instant move heaven and earth (and billions of dollars, pounds sterling and euros) to contain it, why are they unable to do the same in response to a global environmental emergency? Quite simply our system is seen to live and breathe by the present economic system; the problem is that living and breathing within the confines of the world ecological systems is contrary to the activity of progress and development as defined within liberal democracy.
— Review source

Economy

The current economic system is seriously dysfunctional and must be changed. It is based on the assumption of infinite growth, but we live on a planet with finite resources. The system also encourages rampant consumerism, greed and selfishness. Uncontrolled capitalism – the free-market economy – is an inhumane and predatory system. The rapacious consumer economy must end, and be replaced with a steady-state economy. Countries are to be encouraged to become as self-sufficient as possible and only trade in items they don’t have.

Large corporations are to be abolished as they have an unhealthy influence in the world – some are more powerful than many governments.

The stockmarket – another cause of economic insanity – is to be abolished.

The real “axis of evil” – the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund organizations – are to be abolished. Their harsh economic policies have brought untold misery to millions of poor people.

Currency

All nations, as part of the Zones, are to share the same currency – a world currency (name undecided). Thus currency trading and speculation will be abolished.

Environment

The environment on which all life on Earth depends is in serious trouble, no thanks to human activity – namely that of modern industrial civilization. If humans are to survive into the long-term future they must learn to live sustainably. Environmental issues such as climate change began to get worldwide attention in the early 2000s; governments at last began to take the threat seriously.

Reducing population growth is one method of attaining this (see section below). Developing sustainable non-polluting technologies (such as solar and wind power, and nuclear fusion), moving away from the doctrines of endless economic growth and the wasteful consumer society will also help the environment. Whether the current damage to the environment can ever be repaired, though, is another issue.

All these disappearing species are part of a fragile membrane of organisms wrapped around the Earth so thinly, writes Wilson, that it “cannot be seen edgewise from a space shuttle, yet so internally complex that most species composing it remain undiscovered”. We owe everything to this membrane of life. Literally everything. The air we breathe. The food we eat. The materials of our homes, clothes, books, computers, medicines. Goods and services that we can’t even imagine we’ll someday need will come from species we have yet to identify. The proverbial cure for cancer. The genetic fountain of youth. Immortality. Mortality. The living membrane we so recklessly destroy is existence itself.
– The Independent, “Animal Extinction – the greatest threat to mankind”, 30 April 2007

Population control

There are simply too many humans on Earth, and overpopulation has created many environmental and social ills. Population reduction is to be given a top priority, as a smaller population would alleviate many of the problems besetting society. Some ideas (see Overpopulation – the human plague for more details) – these are the relatively benign measures:

Animals

The treatment of other living creatures by humans through history has generally been one of exploitative cruelty, so animals are to be given various rights, though not on the same level as humans.

Animal wilderness sanctuaries are to be set up in all Zones where wild animals can live their lives without interference from humans. The only humans permitted within these Zones would be indigenous populations if these were their ancestral lands (living in a sustainable traditional hunter-gatherer-type lifestyle).

For domestic animals:

Religion

Miscellaneous

Links

Updated: 3/7/2015

Opinions

A place for short notes on my opinions, thoughts and beliefs, in alphabetical order. Note: As of 2019, some of this needs revising!

Abortion

I am emphatically pro-choice. For me, the argument is simple: NO woman should be forced to endure an unwanted pregnancy. Pregnancy and childbirth are the most dangerous ordeals a woman can endure. A fetus should NOT have priority over the woman carrying it. In the womb it is a potential human only, a collection of cells with no consciousness, and should not be regarded in the same light as a fully-grown and self-aware human.

Men should not get a say in whether a woman should have an abortion, as the man gets the easy part of the reproduction process, and could father hundreds of children in his lifetime (from different women) if he were so inclined! (As some men who kept harems did!) Therefore abortion is not men’s business (except for the doctors who perform it).

The government should also subsidize contraceptive products so that abortion should, in the words of President Bill Clinton, become “safe, legal and rare.”

Animals

In general, I have come to believe that animals should be left alone to live their own lives.

Domesticating some animal species – dogs, cats, cattle, horses and so on – has been a great service to humans, but this is not always reciprocated for the animals. Many have been bred to the point where they could not exist without human intervention, centuries of genetic selection deforming their bodies so they are a parody of their wild ancestors, and are in great discomfort from their deformed physique. I am inclined to think that pets should not be kept at all, as they are bred to fulfil selfish human needs. Many people seem to assume that humans have some inherent “right” to own other creatures, but that is a human supremacist view. We don’t own the Earth but share it with other living creatures; something modern industrial culture does not acknowledge.

I am not a vegetarian and am not against eating meat, though I don’t eat much of it myself. Animals predating on others is a part of the natural world and I don’t have much patience with people who are squeamish or emotional about such things – their attitude is symptomatic of how out-of-touch with Nature many people have become. Animals ideally should be killed humanely for food. Unfortunately the huge human population on Earth now requires industrialized production of meat to the detriment of the animals used – they lead highly unnatural lives confined in cages rather than being free to lead their own lives up to being killed.

Wild animals should ideally not be kept as pets or confined in zoos (the private sale and keeping of “exotic” pets should be banned outright). They are not domesticated and being in captivity leads to great psychological distress for them, even if they are well looked-after. Some species such as elephants or orcas can roam for hundreds of kilometers around their territories in the wild, but are restrained to a small enclosure in zoo conditions.

An excuse often given for keeping animals in zoos is that this is “educational” for humans visiting and enables them to interact with the animals, but it is hardly under natural conditions and is again catering to selfish human desires rather than the welfare of the animals. If I want to learn about animals and nature, I watch wildlife documentaries, which show the animals in their natural environment; this is a much more enjoyable way of educating people about them. Even if their lives are shorter in the wild than in a zoo, they are at least free to live without human interference until death.

Controlled crying controversy

Controlled crying – leaving an infant to supposedly settle itself by crying itself to sleep – has been found not to have a detrimental effect upon the infant, according to a just-released study. I feel rather dubious about this conclusion, though, as the infant can’t voice its opinion.

I have done some reading over the last few years of how traditional peoples and cultures rear their children, and now agree with the opinion that many of the methods of child-rearing in our modern society are very dysfunctional and harmful to both baby and parents. One of these is the practice of putting an infant to sleep in a room by itself, rather than near or with its parents or primary carer. This goes against our evolutionary history – if an infant were left by itself in the natural world, it would fall prey to predators. Babies also need constant physical contact; you only have to read the awful treatment of children in orphanages (such as those in Communist Romania) to see how much psychological harm lack of contact did.

This article on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder notes how unnatural Western culture’s practice of solitary sleeping and child-rearing is. Some extracts:

There are obvious psychological stresses on a person in a group, but there may be even greater stresses on a person in isolation. Most higher primates, including humans, are intensely social, and there are few examples of individuals surviving outside of a group. A modern soldier returning from combat goes from the kind of close-knit situation that humans evolved for into a society where most people work outside the home, children are educated by strangers, families are isolated from wider communities, personal gain almost completely eclipses collective good, and people sleep alone or with a partner. Even if he or she is in a family, that is not the same as belonging to a large, self-sufficient group that shares and experiences almost everything collectively. Whatever the technological advances of modern society – and they’re nearly miraculous – the individual lifestyles that those technologies spawn may be deeply brutalizing to the human spirit. […]

When soldiers return to modern society, they must go through – among other adjustments – a terrific oxytocin withdrawal. The chronic isolation of modern society begins in childhood and continues our entire lives. Infants in hunter-gatherer societies are carried by their mothers as much as 50 to 90 percent of the time, often in wraps that keep them strapped to the mother’s back so that her hands are free. That roughly corresponds to carrying rates among other primates, according to primatologist and psychologist Harriet J. Smith. One can get an idea of how desperately important touch is to primates from a landmark experiment conducted in the 1950s by a psychologist and primatologist named Harry Harlow. Baby rhesus monkeys were separated from their mothers and presented with the choice of two kinds of surrogates: a cuddly mother made out of terry cloth or an uninviting mother made out of wire mesh. The wire-mesh mother, however, had a nipple that would dispense warm milk. The babies invariably took their nourishment quickly in order to rush back and cling to the terry-cloth mother, which had enough softness to provide the illusion of affection. But even that isn’t enough for psychological health: in a separate experiment, more than 75 percent of female baby rhesus monkeys raised with terry-cloth mothers – as opposed to real ones – grew up to be abusive and neglectful to their own young.

In the 1970s, American mothers maintained skin-to-skin contact with their nine-month-old babies as little as 16 percent of the time, which is a level of contact that traditional societies would probably consider a form of child abuse. Also unthinkable would be the common practice of making young children sleep by themselves in their own room. In two American studies of middle-class families during the 1980s, 85 percent of young children slept alone – a figure that rose to 95 percent among families considered “well-educated.” Northern European societies, including America, are the only ones in history to make very young children sleep alone in such numbers. The isolation is thought to trigger fears that make many children bond intensely with stuffed animals for reassurance. Only in Northern European societies do children go through the well-known developmental stage of bonding with stuffed animals; elsewhere, children get their sense of safety from the adults sleeping near them.

More broadly, in most human societies, almost nobody sleeps alone. Sleeping in family groups of one sort or another has been the norm throughout human history and is still commonplace in most of the world. Again, Northern European societies are among the few where people sleep alone or with a partner in a private room.

Is it any wonder mental illness is in epidemic proportions in our society? Some of it is certainly genetic, but the society we live in is also a contributing factor for many problems. And the only solution is for people to medicate themselves so they can cope (often inadequately).

An article from last year features a pediatrician, Howard Chilton, who is very critical of controlled crying:

And for Chilton, fact one is that, thanks to the evolution of our narrow, twisted pelvises (to assist upright walking) and our babies’ large heads (to accommodate big brains), all human babies are born developmentally premature, and, like premature infants of any species, need a lot of high-intensity, contact-based care for a long time.

Fact two is that standard baby nourishment – breast milk – is very low in protein, so it’s digested quickly and needs replacing frequently. (Ultrasound studies show that a baby’s stomach full of breast milk empties in about 35 minutes; a breast fills up in about the same time.) These two facts alone – high care and frequent feeding requirements – suggest that young babies are unlikely to be much good at lying peacefully in a room on their own for 12 hours.

Fact three. Until six months, babies have no grasp of object permanence. They cannot understand that when an object is removed from their sight, it still exists. So if a parent leaves, they have, in the baby’s mind, gone forever. Cue panic.

Fact four. Contrary to what many controlled-crying techniques suggest, prior to six months, babies cannot “learn” to sleep on their own. “Certainly not,” says Chilton. “They have no learning centres in their brains [yet]. In terms of a reproducible result – ‘We’ve done this today, so this is my understanding of what will happen tomorrow’ – that just doesn’t happen before six months.” […]

“Before six months, you’re just extinguishing,” explains Chilton matter-of-factly. “Eventually, the baby just gives up.” Fact five: “extinguishment” is the name given to evolution’s last effort at infant survival in extremis. Loss of parental contact is a serious danger signal for young babies, and they’re designed to cry and cry until it’s restored. But beyond a certain point, even a hysterical baby will stop crying, often quite suddenly. (Indeed, parents trying controlled crying often report this phenomenon.) This is because, in an evolutionary sense, an unprotected crying baby is broadcasting its whereabouts to predators. Instinct tells it that its parents have vanished, and that the sabre-toothed tiger that killed them is close. It falls silent in order to survive.

It’s thought, however, that such a baby is still under stress. In one 2012 study of controlled crying in babies as young as four months, researchers found that by the third day of the program, babies had stopped crying at sleep times, but their levels of the stress hormone cortisol were elevated. As the researchers put it, “Although the infants exhibited no behavioural cue that they were experiencing distress … [they] continued to experience high levels of physiological distress, as reflected in their cortisol scores.”

Crime & punishment

In contrast to many with leftist views, I have come to strongly believe in law and order and discipline; my views on these have hardened because of the increasingly evident social problems that stem from a lack of these (e.g. many young people running amuck and virtually being able to get away with murder because society has become so soft on them; they do not respect authority and their parents seem unable to control them – vandalism and graffiti are endemic in my suburb, and many others).

A major issue is the lack of proper mentoring of young people that earlier societies had; a lot of influence comes from popular and consumer culture and advertising, rather than the adults in their lives. These influences are purely about greed and selling products. Our society does a poor job of socializing its young, and the result is the disaffected and selfish behaviour that seems endemic today, not to mention a corrosive nihilism. Irresponsible adults are ultimately to blame; children merely imitate what behaviour they see around them.

A lot of humans unfortunately can’t be trusted to behave responsibly, so appropriate punishments should be applied to discourage misbehavior (e.g. vandals be made to clean up or pay for damages they caused).

I am somewhat undecided on the death penalty – execution is often not a deterrent – but I think it is appropriate in a few exceptional cases as a last resort, such as for serial rapists and serial killers, and the violent mentally ill, as it does permanently remove such particularly dangerous “rogue humans,” who are otherwise incurable (i.e. incapable of reform) and a danger to society for as long as they are alive. If they are merely imprisoned there is always a chance they could escape or be released by well-meaning authorities, and there is no guarantee that they will comply with whatever medication they are on to keep their impulses under control. (There have been a couple of gruesome cases where paranoid schizophrenics were released and went on to behead random victims.) In these cases I thus disagree with Amnesty International’s stance on the issue:

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception regardless of the nature of the crime, the characteristics of the offender, or the method used by the state to kill the prisoner. The death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights. It is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state in the name of justice. It violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

Death

We do not exist before we are conceived, and death is a return to that state of non-existence – the Void. Everything else is speculation (though I do hope there is some form of afterlife!). That’s about as much as I can figure out. Try to think back far enough to your earliest memory, then what happens if you try to go before that? Nothing – there is a void or blankness. A description I saw somewhere about the process of death is that it is like a droplet of water returning to the ocean, and merging with it.

You could die tomorrow, or in 50 years – you don’t know when your time will come. I am ambivalent about the prospect of my own death. For me, death will be a relief, to get away from my own sometimes-tormenting thoughts; not to have to think and worry about things (though the thought of death is still unreal – it’s still something that happens to other people). I have been mildly depressed for years and life is grey and rather meaningless (but I am too apathetic/cowardly to try to take my own life, so I guess I will wait around until I die). I do find upsetting the prospect of people I know dying, such as my parents.

Extinction

Humans, despite our thinking ourselves the center of the universe, could easily go the way of the dinosaurs. Perhaps if an intelligent species were to evolve several million years after our extinction, their archaeologists might dig up our bones and all our artefacts (not to mention our mountains of garbage) and wonder at the fate of this previous species. An extract from an article I read in The Age in 1996 (can’t remember its title):

Even humans are not immune from extinction. Using the standard assumptions about the statistics of populations, J. Richard Gott, an American scientist, has calculated that there is a 95% chance that humanity will become extinct somewhere between 5100 and 7.8 million years from now.

And the sun will also die in about 5 billion years, swallowing up the Earth as the sun expands into a red giant, and the Universe itself will eventually expand into nothingness in billions or trillions of years and the stars burn out. So, from that perspective, everything seems kind of pointless.

Feminism

I believe in the “old-fashioned” definition of feminism: Women should be able to do whatever they wish, without being told they can’t do something because they are a woman. Women should have the same equal rights to education as do men. Sadly, in many cultures, women are still regarded as lesser humans.

Women should have unimpeded access to contraception/family planning and abortion – have control over their bodies. Contraception should be made affordable (government-subsidized if necessary). Countries that neglect women’s rights should be invaded and their governments forced to remedy this! (Such as those where stoning a 13-year-old rape victim to death is considered acceptable.)

Many women in Western culture take feminism for granted, and now dismiss it as irrelevant and somehow embarrassing. This is dangerous: women’s rights were hard-won by women early in the 20th century, but these rights are precarious and vigilance must be maintained against an eroding of them. (See The List: The Worst Places to Be a Woman for examples of how women are still regarded as lower lifeforms in some cultures.)

A perversion of feminism, though, is the rise of so-called “raunch culture,” where women dressing and acting in a provocative manner has somehow become accepted in mainstream culture and fashion. Pornography is not liberating but enslaving. There is nothing wrong with dressing modestly, despite the derision the society I live in currently gives this concept.

I feel that promiscuity is not healthy behavior for women or men, and that both sexes should be held to the same standards.

I don’t hate men as a rule, but I do detest those who regard women as lesser creatures. Men’s Rights Activists also incite my ire – as I noted, women have been treated as lesser beings in most cultures throughout history and still are in some countries, so men have no right to complain about supposed injustices to their own sex.

“Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like – like that smoke. We’ll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You’ll see.”
– James Tiptree, Jr., The Women Men Don’t See

(That story makes a point that women might be safer with aliens :-))

A future vision

Via a negative comment [1] in an entry at writer Charlie Stross’s blog, I came across The Dark Mountain Project, a movement that aims

to question the stories that underpin our failing civilisation, to craft new ones for the age ahead and to reflect clearly and honestly on our place in the world. We call this process Uncivilisation.

They question the idea of progress and technology always creating a better world; much evidence now demonstrates exactly the opposite. Many engineeering projects, for example, are guilty of hubris, believing they can control Nature – as in the case of dams such as the Three Gorges Dam – but Nature will always ultimately triumph, often to the detriment of humanity.

That commenter has the typical view that technology will triumph over everything and those doubting this are just Luddites. I am not anti-technology, but the way it is used now is simply unsustainable. The capitalist consumer society based on endless growth is simply not sustainable long-term and is environmentally destructive. And, no, we’re not likely to start mining asteroids or colonizing other worlds anytime soon. We must learn to live sustainably on this world. A few random ideas:

This is effectively the downsizing of civilization, and it doesn’t necessarily involve abandoning the comforts of civilization such as medicine and heating in winter! The vision I have is of high-tech and simple, environmentally-friendly living combined, such as a house and garden with its own water supply and solar power, part of a small community connected to others physically by rail and virtually by high-speed Internet.

This would require a radical social change; too much for governments now to contemplate. I was disappointed at the response to the recent global financial crisis (2007-2008) – the so-called “solution” was to merely give billions to those who had created the problem, and get back to business as usual! It could have been a catalyst for change, but no one had the courage to try.

JulesLt | July 23, 2010 18:36

I’ve been having a similar frustration with the whole Dark Mountain / uncivilisation crowd prevalent with The Idler set (yet more metropolitan broadsheet wealthy retirees), Alan Moore and Copey.

One particular thing that annoyed – the vision of someone playing Street Fighter on a solar or bicycle powered (I forget which) Super Nintendo, because it epitomized so much that was ill thought out – for starters, a SNES requires vastly more energy to run than any of today’s low power miracles.

Arguably, the total energy required by the infrastructure industries to create a product like a modern smartphone is probably a lot more than was required to produce the NES, or early 8-bit garage computers, but there is no denying that in a post-civilized state you’d be a lot better off with a low-power portable system.

Secondly – it was the implication of ‘no new software’ that is expressed in that thought. Not ‘some kid showing a game he’d written on his bicycle powered computer’. We will perform plays and sit around campfires singing songs and listening to stories, in a world that seems, in an endless festival organised by the Mutoid Waste Company.

Where, I suspect, the storytellers and singers currently charging people to go to their Dark Mountain festival, etc, will somehow expect themselves to be exempt from spending 70% of their time farming enough food to stay alive, because they’re doing something useful.

There’s also something a bit Pol Pot about it all.

Although I love the Guardian article I linked having done a search on them.

(Originally written in my 24/7/2010 Suzy’s Space blog.)

Genetic engineering

I believe that genetic engineering – the technology of manipulating and altering human (and other species’) genetic codes – holds wonderful possibilities and governments should start seriously funding it (and not leaving it to private companies). GE is currently only in the very early stages, though, so how it might develop is unknown. Humans could use GE to improve themselves, such as eliminating genetic disorders and enhancing themselves physically and mentally (and perhaps creating new species of humans). The opposition to GE comes mainly from religious groups who fear that GE is “playing God.” One could equally argue that God gave humans intelligence so we could develop such technologies :-). GE would thus need to be done in secret to avoid terrorism from such groups.

Genetically-modified crops are, however, a different issue, as there is no predicting how such altered plants could alter (or harm) the environment, so it is best to proceed cautiously with this.

Immortality

To be immortal – to live forever – is a popular theme in science fiction and fantasy. But what does immortality really mean? Does it entail living on and on until the sun dies in 5 billion years (and perhaps the rest of humanity becomes extinct in the meantime), then still being around when the Universe expands into black nothingness after billions or trillions more years? Then what does an Immortal do with themselves? From that perspective, I think immortality, were it attainable, might be a curse. In fact, the worst punishment a person could receive would to be made immortal.

There are wealthy people who put themselves into cryonic storage after death (their whole bodies, or just their heads – yuck!), in the hopes that some future technology might revive them once again. Whether this is attainable is doubtful, given that freezing expands the fluid in body cells and destroys them. But medical issues aside, if such revival were attainable, I couldn’t imagine anything worse than being woken up again trapped in your body, in an unfamiliar world where everything and everyone you knew had gone, lost in the past.

An alternative to the above concept of immortality would be to have yourself cloned and your memories and self transferred to the new body (similar to the gholas from the Dune novels), if that were feasible. Repeat as many times as wanted/necessary over the centuries until you got tired of living. Obviously this technology is a long way off, if it is even feasible.

I wouldn’t mind living longer than the normal lifespan, though – as long as I could retain youth and health, and have a purpose in life, as so far I have done little with mine.

Opportunists

There is a type of human whom I especially despise who can be described as Opportunists. They are a particular personality type who are primarily interested in acquiring wealth and status for themselves, no matter how negatively this might affect other people, or society as a whole. They are basically selfish and greedy, and can be found in every type of society. Opportunism is a somewhat regrettable part of human nature, but most people can override this inherent selfishness if required. Dedicated Opportunists will not. Humans have an inherent sense of fairness, and Opportunists are an insult to this. (Fairness is not only limited to humans – other species such as chimpanzees and ants possess it too, as it helps social cohesion.)

One reason political systems such as Communism failed was the actions of Opportunists who exploited the system to their own advantage, and undermined the actions of people who tried to do the right thing. In Communist Russia, the system eventually collapsed in part because of Opportunists, who came out into the open as rapacious oligarches.

A slightly more benign form of Opportunist are entrepreneurs who create a product and business in order to exploit a percieved need. To live in a society where people are constantly trying to sell you one product or another gets tiresome, though. (An example that lingers in memory is from a documentary I watched on the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Just before the eruption, some tourists were being evacuated along a road from the volcano, and some Opportunist-types were lined up there trying to sell them souvenir T-shirts. A volcano is about to explode catastrophically and they were selling T-shirts!! If they got caught in the volcanic ash, I don’t feel much sympathy!)

Confidence tricksters (con “artists”) are a particularly loathesome form of Opportunist as they exploit people’s good will in order to defraud them for the Opportunist’s own gain (usually profit-related). Victims of con artists will be much less trusting in future, which is a loss to a society as a whole. In my view, con artists deserve the death penalty as their selfish actions cause much psychological distress and social damage.

Philanthropy

In May 2017 there was a lot of media attention given to a $400 million philanthropic donation by mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest and his wife Nicola to various charities and causes; the largest such donation in Australian history. On the surface it is a generous gesture, but this is the same man who has pushed for the patronizing welfare debit card for all recipients rather than monetary payments; the Australian equivalent of food stamps. Also, relying on the whims of philanthropists is still a poor and fickle substitute for the government doing its job with adequate funding.

An ABC program called The Drum also debated the gesture. Two of the panelists made some good points, transcribed below:

Jane Caro: “Philanthropy should always be seen as the icing on the cake, not the cake. People need to pay their tax. Now, I’m not saying not to be casting aspersions at Twiggy Forrest; I have no idea whether he pays all his taxes or doesn’t, but I would have like the super profits mining tax; I would have liked that; that would have been good. But what I would like to see is people paying the tax that they are expected to pay, whether they’re corporations or private individuals, because no child should have to rely on charity to get a decent education; no sick person or elderly person should have to rely on charity to get decent health care, and no indigenous community should have to rely on somebody’s goodwill and acts of charity to have decent living conditions. These should be provided by the whole of society, by us all getting in there and paying our due taxes.”

Dr. Michael J. Biercuk: “The bigger concern to me is that this is a kind of a form of privatization of government expenditure. I think as Jane said so eloquently enough that … the idea of providing basic services should not be supplanted by a reliance on philanthropy. That’s where I get a little nervous.”

Naomi Klein has also similarly stated her concern in a New York Times interview:

You argue that Democrats have to share the blame for Trump’s rise, partially in promoting the idea that the solution to vast inequality is to have nicer rich people, or philanthro-capitalism. Well, Trump’s pitch to voters was: “I’m rich. Sure, I have absolutely no experience in government, but the fact of my wealth is all the evidence you need that you can trust me to fix everything.” It’s an absurd pitch, but I don’t know how far away it is from why Americans have trusted Bill Gates to remake the American school system or Africa’s agriculture system. I don’t think there could’ve been a pitch as crass as Trump’s “I can fix America because I’m rich” without that groundwork laid by Davos and the Clinton Global Initiative.

There’s a quote in your book that the Trump phenomenon is an uncouth, vulgar echo of the dangerous idea that billionaires can solve our problems. I wonder if, also in Trump, we see a more uncouth and vulgar echo of another idea that the Democrats brought us: benevolent nepotism. Look at the structure of the Gates Foundation and this idea that, rather than trying to solve these huge global problems through institutions with some kind of democracy and transparency baked into them, we’re just going to outsource it to benevolent billionaires. Look at how the Gates Foundation allocates its money, and how it’s structured: it’s Bill Gates, his father and his wife and Warren Buffett — that has been interrogated a whole lot less than this current outsourcing of the world to Jared and Ivanka.

A similar concept is that of noblesse oblige, the somewhat condescending concept of the rich being benevolent to the less well-off, if they feel like it (such as patronizing charities); the drawback to relying on this is, as is noted in the Wikipedia article:

Noblesse oblige, while seeming to impose on the nobility a duty to behave nobly, thereby apparently gives the aristocracy a justification for their privilege. Their argument is “as nobles, we have rights, but we have duties also; so such duties validate our rights.”

Which is why charity should not be outsourced and privatized. The government is then shirking its responsibility towards looking after its citizens and relying on the whims of the wealthy to provide – in contrast to the government, which in theory at least should provide charity impartially.

(From 18/6/2017 and 23/5/2017 Journal entries)

Politics

I don’t adhere to any one political belief system as most have some elements I agree with or dislike. I tend to take ideas from various ideologies that appeal to me. In general, though, I am leftist/progressive and detest much of right-wing ideology.

I believe that a government should look after its citizens – has a duty to do so, in fact – and provide essential services such as social welfare, public transport, public schools and health care. Essential utilities (gas, water, electricity) should not be privatized (as has been the regrettable trend in many countries, including Australia) but remain under government control. In this I am generally more Left/liberal/socialist.

I find conservative views on these issues repellent; if they had their way the poor would be left to fend for themselves, scrabble for underpaid menial and degrading jobs or starve to death, and big business and corporations would run amuck. In Australia I would thus vote Labor/Greens/Democrats (Labor are the equivalent of the U.S. Democrats party). I don’t agree with all their policies but still find them preferable to the “survival of the fittest” ideologies of conservative/Right politics and the equally loathesome Libertarians (whose philosophy seems to be based on privatizing everything).

My views on law and order, however, differ somewhat to many with Left-leaning politics (see Crime, above). Excessive immigration and the subsequent pressure on infrastructure and services is also a concern; I believe immigration should be restricted – i.e. kept at a manageable/sustainable level – but I am not anti-immigration, and don’t believe any races should be discriminated against (see Race vs. culture below).

Race versus culture

Racism is defined as discriminating against or disliking a person purely because of their skin color and/or ethnicity. As all humans share the same biological makeup and heritage, such a distinction is superficial; skin color and other physical characteristics evolved to adapt to different locations and climates, and are not reflective of a person’s intelligence. Therefore, on biological terms, such racism is illogical. It comes from a basic suspicion of people who “look different” from those one grew up with; such aversion can be overcome through education and familiarization.

Compared to the other great apes, human gene sequences are remarkably homogeneous. If you can trace your ancestors back far enough, all humans are related; the identical ancestors point is up to 5000-15,000 years ago.

Race and culture are often regarded as the same. Culture, however, is not related to human biology. People of different skin colors and ethicalities who grow up in a particular culture will share the characteristics of that culture.

[…] in making the difference between races, it is not race that we think about, but culture: “… a common history, common laws and religion, similar habits of thought and a conscious striving together for certain ideals of life.”
– Wikipedia: Racism

Religion

My immediate family are Baptist Christian in belief. Dad converted to Christianity in 1982 as did the rest of my family, and we attended a local Baptist Church and Sunday School during the 1980s. For me it provided some socializing with other young people my age which I otherwise missed out on at school. I nominally converted to Christianity in my early teens but was never committed to it as I was more preoccupied with the characters I created in my own imagination.

To me there is no difference between ancient mythologies and modern religions; mythologies are merely religions that have gone out of fashion. I enjoy reading about the ancient gods; favorites include those from Egyptian and Norse mythologies. I also like elements of the so-called “New Age” movement, such as crystals. I also like the idea of ancestor veneration (not worship!) as found in Eastern religions, and other elements of these. So I do not commit strictly to any one belief, but enjoy elements of many.

I did go through an anti-religious phase when younger, but now I would now describe myself as agnostic – not unwilling to discount (and be hopeful that) there might be something more than the mundane reality around us. The strictly mundane “realistic” view of life – that there is no meaning and no afterlife – is profoundly bleak and depressing. I do, however, believe in such scientifically-proven ideas such as evolution; I am not a creationist! There are some areas, though, where science and religion seem to converge.

I am finding that I am generally tolerant of other beliefs as I get older. I find militant atheists extremely disagreeable and just as bad in their own way as religious fanatics (two extremes of a spectrum).

Suicide

Suicide in Western culture is generally regarded as an act of desperation or mental illness. While this can sometimes be the case, I believe it can also be chosen as part of a calm and rational decision to end one’s existence, and not always because of terminal illness.

Thinking too much

Thinking too much about philosophical questions such as the meaning of life is dangerous. Essentially, there is no meaning or purpose to our existence – it is a series of random events – so dwelling upon this will lead one to despair and depression. That’s why I avoid reading any philosophy books (though I get depressed over this topic anyway). Sometimes I believe consciousness or self-awareness can be a curse – other animals live in the moment and have no concept of such questions.

“If the Universe is just a puzzle box, it doesn’t mean a damn thing, does it? It’s not enough. Not any more; maybe it never was.” Rosenberg had reached a kind of ultimate logic, she thought. He must be spending his walking time addressing the final question science couldn’t answer, in this godless age: Why bother to live at all?
– Stephen Baxter, Titan

Time travel

Would time-travel be possible? One thought I had that is if the positions of every atom in the Universe could be mapped over the entire span of time from the past to the present, then one could travel back in time, assuming you had a machine that could perform this task by choosing the co-ordinates wanted. As such a feat would involve an unimaginably huge amount of computing power, perhaps it might only be necessary to map the atom positions in your local region (e.g. in the Solar System). Time travel into the future would not be possible due to the peculiarity of quantum mechanics: that the future positions of atoms can’t be determined with any accuracy (see Objective collapse theory). The past, however, is fixed and certain; the future does not yet exist with any certainty. There is thus only the past and now.

A type of time travel into the future is attainable if you are able to travel in space at or near light speed: local time slows down while the rest of the Universe continues at a normal pace (Time dilation). This is not a type of time travel that would be desirable for me; to emerge and find that everyone I had known was old or dead would be depressing.

For myself, I would like to time travel back to the past: my own past (in my lifetime) and to other eras, that of the dinosaurs being a favorite. I would like to revisit and take photos of places from my past that no longer exist, such as my grandmother’s house, and to see family members when they were much younger – this is one of my favorite fantasies as I am so unhappy in the present. I don’t know if I would be able to meet family members – a person claiming to be from the future would be thought to be delusional at the least! And how would meeting one’s younger self affect each version? As I have no memories of such an event it obviously hasn’t happened. That’s where time travel gets complicated (see the Grandfather paradox) – unless time travel into the past puts the traveler into a parallel universe that doesn’t affect the original timeline. Physicist Michio Kaku believes this last to be the most plausible of the various theories, as it avoids violating causality, and explains why there are no hordes of time travelers observing major historical events:

My favorite solution is the many-worlds theory: when you go backwards in time and you save Abraham Lincoln from being assassinated, you’ve actually saved someone else’s Abraham Lincoln. Your past cannot be changed, and you’ve gone to a parallel universe. If the river of time forks into two rivers, you hop across rivers after the fork.
– “Things We’ll Probably Never See,” NYT, 27/3/2008

However if there is more than one timeline in the universe, as described in the Many-Worlds Hypothesis, then time travel can be consistent – going back in time simply creates a new, consistent timeline, one of countless others created by quantum events. These timelines are each self-consistent, but as every act of time-travel changes the timeline and creates a new history, it is effectively impossible to travel to one’s own past; only to the past of a different timeline, created by your own presence and potentially very different to the one you started in.
– Orion’s Arm, Why No Time Travel in OA

You would presumably have no means of returning to the timeline you came from, which is rather depressing.

Another problem of time travel in either direction is that your body continues to age normally. Thus if you time travel and spend a year in the past or future, your body will be a year older when you return to where you left (i.e. in the present, from where you departed). Thus you would not be able to spend too much time in the past or future, in order not to age too much in the present!

A proposed hypothetical effect of the operation of the Large Hadron Collider (June 2008) was that it could enable time-travelers from the future to come back here! (“Time travelers from the future ‘could be here in weeks’,” Telegraph, 6/2/2008.) The high energies involved could result in the inadvertent creation of a wormhole (though it would be microscopic in size). Future travelers would, however, only be able to go back as far as the date of the first operation of the LHC (which is another way of explaining why there are no records of time travelers in our past).

Warrior culture

Since my teenage years I have had a fascination with warrior culture (male warrior culture) and war. This is something of a contrast to the usual “left-wing” views on such matters, and I make no apologies for it. I am under no delusion that war itself is “glamorous” (having had a relatively sheltered life, I probably sound a bit naïve). The aspects that fascinate me are the armor and weapons, and the male camaraderie (which, as a female, I am excluded from). All of the imaginary characters I create have been solitary male warrior types.

In 2007 there was news of the death of a Marines Major called Douglas Zembiec. Of interest are his views and attitude towards war and killing, which are unapologetically (and somewhat refreshingly) honest: he enjoyed it. Not a “politically-correct” view these days!

In an age when many prefer military personnel to be diffident and reluctant to engage in violence, Zembiec was proudly a throwback. “One of the most noble things you can do is kill the enemy,” he once said. […]

Zembiec seemed to revel in the experience of combat. In the magazine article, he was quoted as calling a firefight in Fallouja “the greatest day of my life.”

“I never felt so alive, so exhilarated, so purposeful,” he said the day after a battle in which two of his troops were killed and 18 wounded. “There is nothing equal to combat and there is no greater honor than to lead men into combat.”

Zembiec was widely admired among Marines. “We can dispute the politics of any war – Iraq, Afghanistan or any others,” said Bing West, author of two books about combat Marines in Iraq, “but we cannot dispute our need for warriors. Doug was our guardian.”

Sgt. Maj. William Skiles, who fought beside Zembiec at Fallouja, said he inspired great loyalty among his troops. “An entire company of Marines would trade places with him right now,” Skiles said from Camp Pendleton. “They would put down their lives for him.”
— LA Times (link no longer available)

From an LA Times 2004 profile:

It was the time of his life, he acknowledged later, for by his own definition Zembiec is a warrior, and a joyful one. He is neither bellicose nor apologetic: War means killing, and killing means winning. War and killing are not only necessary on occasion, they’re also noble. “From day one, I’ve told my troops that killing is not wrong if it’s for a purpose, if it’s to keep your nation free or to protect your buddy,” he said. “One of the most noble things you can do is kill the enemy.”

For his Marines, Zembiec asks for respect, not sympathy, even as one-third of his 150-man company became casualties. “Marines are violent by nature – that’s what makes us different,” he said. “These young Marines didn’t enlist to get money to go to college. They joined the Marines to be part of a legacy.”

He knows talk like that puts him outside mainstream America and scares the bejabbers out of some people. Modern America is uncomfortable with celebrating those who have gone to war and killed their nation’s enemy. Maybe it’s because American military hardware is thought to be so superior that any fight with an adversary is a mismatch. Then again, people who feel that way probably have not stared at the business end of a rocket-propelled grenade launched by an insurgent hopped up on hatred for America. […]

“He’s everything you want in a leader: He’ll listen to you, take care of you and back you up, but when you need it, he’ll put a boot” up your behind, said Sgt. Casey Olson. “But even when he’s getting at you, he doesn’t do it so you feel belittled.”

The image of Zembiec leading the April 6 charge had a lasting impact on his troops. Leading by example is a powerful tool. “He gets down there with his men,” said Lance Cpl. Jacob Atkinson. “He’s not like some of these other officers: He leads from the front, not the rear.” […]

My own generation of baby boomers went to college in order to express their individuality. Zembiec was searching for something else at the Naval Academy. “It was a culture of hardness and mental toughness and challenge. You’re there to be part of a team. It’s not about you.” […]

Would you want Douglas Zembiec in charge of U.S. foreign policy? Maybe, maybe not. Would you want him on your side if you – or your nation – got involved in a street brawl? Without a doubt. He is, as his fellow officers say, a military hybrid of modern tactics and ancient attitudes. “Doug is the prototypical modern infantry officer,” Clearfield said. “He’s also not that much different than the officers who led the Spartans into combat 4000 years ago.”

One trend that disgusts me is for corporate executives and business types to equate themselves with warriors in a metaphorical sense. Business executives read books like Management and Genghis Khan: Lessons for Multinational Business Enterprises (wonder what Genghis would think of that?!); there is even a website called CorporateWarriors.com (found after some random Googling), which “offers the nation’s finest career services to corporate warriors … If you are a courageous corporate warrior, we invite you to select from our extraordinary battle weapons and join us in the arena for the corporate challenge.” If businessmen think they are in any sense emulating the profession of warrior, they are sadly deluded; there is nothing honorable about the mundane process of making money, and a real warrior would regard them in disgust.

“Today we think of war as carnage. But war then was the primary profession; there was no such thing as business, the title of ‘tradesman’ or ‘merchant’ was despised, only war had any honor for a man, especially for a prince or king, allowing him to acquire wealth, advance his station, make a name for himself.”
— Stephen Pressfield

The business world is a pallid substitute for what was once regarded as an honorable profession.

Updated: 26/10/2019

Overpopulation – the human plague

“Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, maybe we should control the population to ensure the survival of our environment.”
— Sir David Attenborough, The Life of Mammals

Populate and perish! Overpopulation has become a topic of great concern to me, but one that seems taboo in our economic-growth-obsessed society (and one that usually seems to invoke indignant reactions). I don’t consider it an exaggeration to regard overpopulation as the single greatest threat to humanity’s existence and environment today – most ailments afflicting society can be traced back to too many people competing for dwindling resources.

The world’s human population reached approximately 6.5 billion in 2006, 6.72 billion in November 2008 (only 7 years earlier, in 1999, it reached 6 billion), and continues to grow alarmingly – in 2011 it reached 7 billion. Humanity is now in plague proportions, putting an immense strain on the Earth’s environment. Cities, urban sprawl, roads and traffic are spreading like grey cancers over the continents, smothering the land underneath with concrete and asphalt. Wilderness areas are disappearing because of this encroachment, and many other species are pushed into endangerment or extinction.

Even worse, the type of society that has developed – one based on the pursuit of endless consumption – is ultimately unsustainable as resources are voraciously consumed. The immense amounts of waste produced because of this pollute the environment (plastics are particularly noxious as they can take thousands of years to break down). Humans are effectively fouling their own nest. The more humans there are, the fewer resources there are for everyone, and there is a subsequent decline in quality of life.

In the natural world, animal populations tend to increase in times of plenty, but die off when famine inevitably strikes – the “boom and bust” cycle. Technological innovations such as the “Green Revolution” – increasing crop yields through use of pesticides and artificial fertilization – have allowed the human population to reach an artificially high level and bypass this cycle … at least for the present era.

It is not unlikely, however, that our current industrial civilization will ultimately collapse, like others in history before it, such as the Mayans or Roman Empire. The collapse of this current one will, however, be many times worse than previous collapses as there are so many more people, and it is dangerously fragile and interdependent due to globalization – much of what we consume is obtained from far away, usually other countries – and reliant upon environmentally-damaging forms of intensive agriculture.

Battery hens and apartments

Screen captures from the Baraka film: caged battery hens and overcrowded slum apartments – not much difference! Unpleasant and stressful conditions for both species.

A little-noted aspect of high populations is that the more people there are, the less the individual matters as an individual is easily replaced (unless they possess a valuable skill or talent). It is impossible to see a population of thousands or millions of humans as individuals; they instead become an amorphous mass. Humans originally evolved in small family and tribal groups where most people knew each other (the upper comfortable limit seems to be two or three hundred). To live in a city of millions is thus a dehumanizing experience, and leads to stress and dysfunction. Even if a large population could be supported, would people really like to live in high-density regions, packed into multi-storey buildings like unfortunate caged battery hens? I certainly wouldn’t, and humans did not evolve to live like this.

Here’s China. How would you like to live there? Look at all those little window A/Cs. They’ve got power, at least for now. Humans can be packed in. Do you want to live like a termite? Are we termites? Come on, I want to be up on top of the hill where that chair is and I want to have some space around me – don’t you?

People don’t seem to want to think. We still allow people to have more than two kids. We encourage reproduction. We actually give you a discount for having kids. You should have to pay more when you have your first kid – you pay more taxes. When you have your second kid you pay a lot more taxes, and when you have your third kid you don’t get anything back, they take it all. Our tax system is completely backwards. But, then, so is our whole economic system.
— Eric R. Pianka, “The Vanishing Book of Life on Earth”

She glanced down between her boots through the transparent deck of the ship as it passed over the center of Jejeno. The city was both a tribute to isenj engineering skills and an indictment of their stupidity. The forest of asymmetric towers – bronze, brown, copper, tan – and narrow streets created endless canyons. Shapakti said that it was an echo of isenj origins as termite-like animals living in giant mounds, but Esganikan had seen almost identical soaring buildings in the images of Earth. It was how greedy species built: it showed space was at a premium because they had filled it and out-priced it – yes, she understood Earth’s economy now, she understood it very well – and they didn’t care about the intrusion on the landscape. It was a statement of their contempt for all other life.
— Karen Traviss, Ally

His scathing assessment was being submitted to the main opposition Conservative Party’s policy group focusing on quality of life. “Putting 10 million aggressive hominids into close proximity and inviting them to engage in serial acts of competitive individualism … for jobs, schools or parking spaces, could not be considered a reasonable idea,” Bayley said. “You put rats in claustrophobic circumstances and they become homosexual, murderous and cannibalistic in no time at all. Instead humans find ingenious solutions, underground car parks, coffee shops, Chinese takeaways, one-man buses, cycle lanes, tall buildings.”
— “London’s a rat hole,” Sydney Morning Herald, 8 August 2006

We touch on the subject of city dwellers, my tribe, as it happens. We’re a kind of helpless, infantilized race, in Bill Mollison’s eyes, living in a doomed dreamworld, lucky if we know how to tie a granny knot and incapable of feeding ourselves without the aid of a supermarket, a bijou delicatessen or a restaurant that hangs as rustic decor the kind of bushman’s tools he grew up using.

Cities, “cancerous” and “parasitic,” are the most unsustainable systems in the world, he says, sucking up resources and spewing out waste. “Look at New York. It doesn’t produce a single thing for anybody anywhere. It has no product of relevance to human beings. It’s just a great shit heap.”
— “A man for all seasons,” Fenella Souter

Finally, even most Asians choose for suburbia with lush gardens, when they get the chance (prosperity) for it. Their living in huge and densely packed concentrations is an adaptation out of economic necessity rather than a social preference. We humans haven’t diverged that much since we left the East-African savannas, and we still prefer the parks landscape.
— Comment, Centauri Dreams blog

Competition for employment is another negative effect of overpopulation. Various jobs have become more automated and efficient, requiring less manpower (or else jobs are “outsourced” to countries where labor is cheap) yet the population continues to expand, and all these “surplus” people need to find some means to make a living. They face a highly-competitive “employer’s market,” in which employers have a huge resource pool to choose from and can thus afford to be selective about whom they employ. Unfortunately, for those who don’t have the appropriate skills, menial, low-paying jobs (mainly in the service industry) are often the only option (if they manage to find work at all – some less desirable alternatives are to turn to crime, or starve to death). Higher education to attain the requisite qualifications is expensive and beyond the reach of many, so a lot of people may remain in such unfulfilling dead-end jobs all their lives – a dismaying waste of potential.

There is also the “spillover effect”: many citizens of highly-populated countries emigrate to seek opportunities they can’t find in their homeland. But economic immigration can incite resentment amongst a host country’s citizens, who have to compete even more for jobs (and some of the latter in turn might emigrate to other nations). There are only so many habitable places on Earth, however, and space colonization is a long way off, if it ever eventuates – therefore, overpopulated countries can’t expect to keep exporting their surplus people.

Drastic solutions are needed, and politicians and businessmen should stop irresponsibly urging people to have more children to “boost the economy” – the economy can’t keep growing indefinitely (as they seem to think it can) as there are only finite resources on Earth (and in space). The Earth’s environment is not coping now with nearly 7 billion humans; how much worse will it be when growth reaches 8 or 9 billion by the middle of this century as predicted?

The much-publicized “solutions” for climate change such as carbon emissions taxes or living more frugally are only superficial actions that do nothing to address the basic cause of environmental problems: more people competing for ever-dwindling resources. Reduce population growth and humanity’s environmental impact on the Earth will also be lessened.

Fewer humans will therefore make life pleasanter for everyone.

Rather than endless economic growth, a steady-state economy is a more desirable option; one that is not dependent upon ever-increasing consumption to function.

Let’s have a stationary world as opposed to one that’s based on growth-mania where everybody has to elbow the other guy and compete to get to the front and be concerned about who’s going to win and who’s going to lose every day in the stock market. In a stationary world, we can focus in on things that really matter – I love Mill’s phrase “the art of living.” Let’s get to work on improving the art of living.
— Eric R. Pianka, “The Vanishing Book of Life on Earth”

The problem with agriculture

In 1987, scientist Jared Diamond wrote an article provocatively titled “The Worst Mistake In The History Of The Human Race” – the “mistake” in his opinion being the development of agriculture that supplanted humanity’s previous hunter-gatherer existence. “With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.” It also enabled populations to expand far beyond their natural limits as food could be produced in much greater quantities than a hunter-gatherer lifestyle provided. The industrialization of agriculture – the mass planting, mechanized gathering, processing and export of crops – accelerated this expansion even more during the 20th century.

This, however, comes with a downside – if crops fail, mass starvation threatens as most people are entirely dependent upon food imported from distant farms, and there is no way hunting and gathering could sustain 7 billion people, even assuming they had the requisite skills (which most don’t). Most people in developed countries have been shielded from famine and are accustomed to an endless, even over-abundant supply of food (with the accompanying health problems). They are shocked at images of starvation from developing countries, but this is what happens in the rest of the natural world – Nature can be ruthless. This boom-and-bust cycle is inexorable: animal populations flourish in times of plenty, but are depleted when food becomes scarce.

The only way for humans to sustainably circumvent this cycle without mass starvation or, conversely, inflicting huge environmental damage, is to curb population growth and restrict how many children are born. This goes against natural instinct to reproduce profligately in times of plenty, but ensures that there will be enough food for everyone in leaner times. Adopting such a policy, however, would involve radical changes in how society functions – abandoning the infinite growth policy that economies are addicted to – and few would be willing to undertake this; certainly not governments or businesses who encourage growth. We are effectively trapped in a vicious cycle of more people requiring more food production which in turn encourages yet higher reproductive rates.

Agriculture requires huge amounts of land for crops, and this is another source of pressure upon wilderness areas along with cities. A worrying 2011 report in Time magazine is “Africa Blossoms: A Continent On the Verge of an Agricultural Revolution.” The expansion of agriculture in Africa is presented in a positive light here, but the continent’s endangered wildlife are already squeezed into nature reserves due to a growing human population, various animals unable to follow their ancient migration routes anymore. (The few hunter-gatherer peoples still living their traditional sustainable lifestyle are similarly threatened.) Agriculture will only add to this environmental destruction.

Another article on this theme is “AGRICULTURE: Ending the World as We Know It” by John Feeney.

China’s problems

China currently has the largest population (over 1.3 billion as of 2007) and it continues to increase (India is following closely with an estimated population of 1.2 billion as of 2009). Since the 1980s it has attempted to rein in this growth through a one-child policy, but this has had only a limited effect and many citizens try to circumvent it. A few groups such as ethnic minorities are also exempt from this law.

China needs to keep its economy growing to provide jobs for all these people, and thus must scour the world for more and more resources (such as minerals and metals). But there are only so many products it can make, only so many jobs it can provide, and the process of production is hugely damaging to the environment – consider the millions of plastic toys with the “Made in China” label which will eventually end up in landfill, polluting the environment for centuries. It shares the world with other countries competing for dwindling resources. This could all end in catastrophe before the end of the 21st century.

China’s one-child policy is criticized by those in Western democracies who see it as an impingement on individual rights. But China can’t afford to otherwise relax this policy – its already-huge population is having a worldwide environmental impact as they become more affluent.

Clearly, a rising birth rate would place an enormous burden on China’s social and medical infrastructure, which is far less developed than physical infrastructure like roads and rail. A change in emphasis will be essential. Hospitals will need vast new infusions of money and other resources. The weak system of homes for the elderly, child-care providers and other social services will have to be greatly expanded.
— TIME magazine, 29 May 2008

Where will the money and resources come from to provide for a massive population?

China also faces one of the most skewed sex ratios in the world: men outnumber women 1.2 to 1. The male surplus, which means many Chinese men will never be able to have a family, creates an ominous future; already, an underclass of young male thugs is proliferating in Chinese cities, a group easily recruited for crime. In Beijing’s worst nightmare, these angry young men could turn against the state. As scholars Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer wrote in a 2004 book, in the mid-19th century unequal sex ratios, which left men idle, contributed to armed rebellion in the Chinese countryside.

A radical solution might be to cull (as in kill) the surplus young males – wars, in fact, already tend to do this, though in a somewhat uncontrolled manner. In fact, that is something that could be done in any society with a surplus of single, young, unemployed males between 12-25 years (who tend to be the most troublesome elements – just consult any statistics for violent crime). A study called “Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population” focuses on the social implications of surplus males.

What happens to a society that has too many men? In this provocative book, Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer argue that, historically, high male-to-female ratios often trigger domestic and international violence. Most violent crime is committed by young unmarried males who lack stable social bonds. Although there is not always a direct cause-and-effect relationship, these surplus men often play a crucial role in making violence prevalent within society. Governments sometimes respond to this problem by enlisting young surplus males in military campaigns and high-risk public works projects. Countries with high male-to-female ratios also tend to develop authoritarian political systems.

Hudson and den Boer suggest that the sex ratios of many Asian countries, particularly China and India – which represent almost 40 percent of the world’s population – are being skewed in favor of males on a scale that may be unprecedented in human history. Through offspring sex selection (often in the form of sex-selective abortion and female infanticide), these countries are acquiring a disproportionate number of low-status young adult males, called “bare branches” by the Chinese.

Hudson and den Boer argue that this surplus male population in Asia’s largest countries threatens domestic stability and international security. The prospects for peace and democracy are dimmed by the growth of bare branches in China and India, and, they maintain, the sex ratios of these countries will have global implications in the twenty-first century.

Sounds harsh? Well, as a female, I have been menaced a few times in public over the years by groups of young males (verbally so far, not physically) for no apparent reason than being a female by herself – boys in groups seem to develop an irresistible urge to harass any vulnerably-looking females. Feeling threatened like that is extremely psychologically distressing and I have no way to retaliate (I do fantasize about eviscerating them). So, given that, my attitude has hardened and I would feel a lot safer if there were fewer aggressive young males around. How would you identify the aggressive ones, as, of course, not all males fit this description? One way is to catch those who roam the streets at night in groups or gangs – I see the results in my neighborhood the next morning (graffiti, vandalism). Another is to target those convicted of violent crimes. Note that humans don’t hesitate to cull other species (some being elephants and kangaroos) – species that are seen as being in competition with humans for land and resources.

Back on topic: China must therefore take stronger (and perhaps unpalatable) measures to reduce its population growth if it wants to keep its society stable.

To other worlds?

One solution much-touted by spaceflight advocates is to alleviate overpopulation on Earth by expanding into and colonizing the Solar System, (and, eventually, extrasolar planets) and exploit these other places for the resources required. The colonization of the Solar System is feasible in theory with current technology, but this would require people to live in artificial environments for however long they stayed in space; not a desirable prospect for most compared to the richness of Earth’s environment. Terraforming is way beyond humanity’s abilities for the foreseeable future.

Offworld colonies, assuming governments and private corporations were willing to fund them, could at best support a few thousand people, and transporting them to the colonies would be a years-long process with the only propulsive means now available, chemical rockets, which are slow and inefficient. Given these present-day restrictions, possibly habitable worlds in other solar systems are simply too far away to be contemplated, unless one is prepared to spend thousands of years’ traveling time in some sort of space ark. Any volunteers?

The Solar System is regarded by advocates as a near-limitless source of resources, and they see no need for humanity to restrict its growth; indeed, an expanding population will eventually force humans to expand its presence off Earth. I have some interest in the space program, but have become exasperated with the disdain that space colonization advocates have for suggestions that humans should try to live sustainably on Earth. They seem to take such views as a personal insult. An example of this thinking is Stephen Ashworth’s space advocacy website, which contains essays such as Why Go Into Space?, where he asserts that expansionists are morally superior (!):

The expansion of human activities into outer space is therefore an integral part of the growth of modern Western civilization. It is an assertion of our values of tolerance, liberty, progress, reason and democracy. Anybody whose main concern is to suppress or destroy this civilization will quite naturally find nothing of interest in space.

This to my mind is a disturbing example of hubris: of the Western mindset that the Earth and other worlds are there to be conquered and exploited by humanity; that humans are the pinnacle of evolution (“We are no mere ‘environmental abnormality’; we are here for a purpose; we are what nature has been working towards – unconsciously, unknowingly – for billions of years” – source). Space colonization with this attitude is a continuation of the policy that has caused so much devastation to Earth’s environment; of enabling reckless population and economic growth without care for environmental consequences.

A more realistic view of the Solar System “safety valve” theory:

Exoplanets as safety valves for excess populations or as new resource-providers are a non-starter on numerical grounds, quite apart from any technological, financial, physical, humanitarian or sociological objections that there may be. At most, at enormous cost, we may within the next century or two establish small inhabited outposts on the Moon, Mars and perhaps some of the asteroids or a moon or two of Jupiter (which would at least though, provide some refuges against dinosaur killers). Even if it were to be possible, the emigration of excess population to other planets can only postpone the moment by a few centuries when the population of all planets exceeds the capacity of those planets to support it. Neither can exoplanets be expected to provide replacements for dwindling terrestrial resources. Even within the solar system the cost in terms of the consumed resources of (say) mining a small asteroid would exceed the value of any useful products by a large factor. The same comment would apply a million million million times over to any attempt to provide any supplies of any material items from even the nearest exoplanet.
— Chris Kitchin, Exoplanets: Finding, Exploring, and Understanding Alien Worlds

“Can Space Colonization End Overpopulation?” at HardSF gives a good overview on why space is not a solution to overpopulation.

Domestic animals – the other overpopulation problem

As the human population has expanded, so has the numbers of the animals domesticated throughout history, the major species being cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, horses, cats and dogs (see “Farm Animal Populations Continue to Grow”). These animals have traveled with humans to every inhabited continent and become invasive species, competing with native animals for food and living space, and usually displacing the natives. An xkcd diagram shows that humans and domestic animals vastly outnumber wild creatures.

Domestic animals that are farmed require vast tracts of pasture for feed, and this, along with agriculture, results in clearance of wilderness areas. This National Geographic diagram from 2014 shows the percentage of undeveloped/wild land (46.5%) to agriculture (38.6%) and other (urban, etc.) (14.9%); a ratio likely to worsen for undeveloped land in the next few decades.

Animals kept as pets – such as cats and dogs in Western culture – can escape and become feral, breeding in vast numbers; this also applies to various farm animals. Australia is a sad example of a continent with unique indigenous species that has become overrun by the various introduced domestic animals since European settlement; the latter have caused much environmental damage, along with the industrial civilization that developed since then.

One solution is to encourage less consumption of meat; this, however, will not help the environment much if human population continues to grow, as farmland is still required for agriculture. If human population is stabilized and decreases, eating less meat will be more effective.

The other is to greatly restrict pet breeding and ownership; this would cause a lot of outrage amongst many, but is necessary to reduce the environmental impact such animals have. It would also see far fewer unwanted animals euthanized each year.

Countermeasures

In this section are ideas for combating the overpopulation problem (which would applied to all countries equally), in order from the benign to the unpleasant. Some of these verge on the totalitarian, but with so many countries either unwilling or unable to regulate their populations, they could be seen as necessary measures! Otherwise, Nature will – sooner or later – deal with excess populations far more brutally.

Some people would – with tedious predictability – try to subvert these measures (a lot of people seem to lose all rationality when it comes to reproduction) so harsh punishments would be necessary to discourage this (e.g. compulsory sterilization, or even the death penalty as an extreme deterrent).

One irritation in fiction is that population control is, more often than not, presented in a negative manner; as part of a draconian system that the main characters rebel against. (Examples can be found on the Population Control page at TV Tropes.) I wish authors and film makers would show some responsibility and stop depicting such characters as heroic. The population rules are often there for good reason – such as conserving scarce resources – and characters who rebel are in fact selfish and irresponsible, and thus deserving of whatever punishment they receive.

What would an ideal population figure be? Probably no more than one billion (1000 million) – a look at the World population estimates page at Wikipedia shows that the human population up to the 1800s was under this figure, and humanity did not have too much impact on the environment until the Industrial Revolution, when the population began a rapid increase.

Relatively benign methods

The following methods are already in use in many countries and are effective long-term strategies, but they can take decades for the results to show:

Coercive & passive measures

Draconian measures

Extremely unpleasant and last-resort measures

Personal impact

Melbourne has been undergoing rapid population growth since the 1990s, and this has put great strain on its infrastructure, as well as driving up house prices. The demand for housing is seeing overdevelopment in the suburbs as described on my Crimes against architecture page, ruining their ambiance. If this trend continues into the future, as it seems it will, Melbourne will not remain a livable city but turn into an overcrowded slum, as so many megacities are in the world – and they are extremely nightmarish and unpleasant places to inhabit if you like open spaces and nature.

The Victorian State Government keeps enthusing about how wonderful population growth is; how this proves Melbourne is a desirable place to live and how it will boost the economy, and so on. (I get so infuriated at this that I just want to slap some sense into the offending minister/s!)

In a speech that could have been ghost-written by any of the aforementioned Canadian growth-a-holics, Premier John Brumby of Victoria spoke of his Government’s plan to “manage growth,” because you see, growth is inevitable, and growth projections must be treated as, if anything, “pessimistic,” i.e. conservative. Thus Melbourne is going to grow at least 44% by 2030, with 6.2 million people by 2020. “Demographer Bernhard Salt has projected we will regain our title (sic) as Australia’s largest city within 20 years.” Note that the Premier treats a population growth plateau like a sports trophy to be raised aloft in triumph. Melbourne will regain its “title” like Muhammed Ali regained his title against George Foreman. Similarly when Victoria was “losing” people in the 1990s, presumably the state of Victoria was a “loser.” But now “the exodus has been turned around and people are now voting with their feet in favour of Victoria.” It is as if Premier Brumby is fighting an election campaign and people moving to Victoria are casting a vote for him. A commonplace illusion among Premiers, Governors and Prime Ministers.
— “The ubiquitous rationale of growthism”

They seem to not comprehend that such growth will destroy what makes Melbourne so livable: its low housing density and suburbs with space for gardens. Melbourne was not designed to be a high-density city and was all the better for it. Traffic is now horrendous and the dilapidated public transport system can’t cope with the population we already have. I dread to think what the city will be like in another decade or so.

I have never had any desire to have children, so I at least will not be contributing to population growth!

Unlike the fertile lands of Europe or the USA, Australia is a dry continent with ancient, nutrient-poor soils – much of it is desert, as a satellite map shows – and thus it cannot support a high population, something those who want to fill Australia up with people are unaware of (or don’t want to know). Boundless Plains? at Mark O’Connor’s site also shows maps of Australia’s relatively small proportion of abundant rain and fertile soils.

The Aboriginal peoples survived for 40,000 years or more on the Australian continent as hunter-gatherers, their sustainable lifestyle having minimal impact. European discovery and settlement was arguably the worst disaster to affect Australia’s fragile ecosystem, short of an asteroid strike. In only 200 years or so, much of its unique fauna has become extinct, flora has been damaged or wiped out (whole forests cleared), and exotic species introduced, irrevocably changing the environment here. The destruction continues apace. Continued population growth will only put more pressure on what remnant native life remains.

Various Australian politicians have been expressing concern about the supposedly declining birth rate for the last few years. The following newspaper article is an example of this kind of warped thinking:

Business of babies

A businessman is spending $200,000 on newspaper ads urging Aussies to have babies.

Electronics multi-millionaire Gary Johnston, 56, aimed to draw attention to the population woes in full-page ads in major papers.

“Where are the next-generation Shane Warnes or Ian Thorpes going to come from?” the Sydney father of four asks.

“The few young people left will be too busy taking care of old people, alongside being taxed out of existence.

“Something must be done to reverse the declining birth rate, and I hope this ad may help bring the matter to the attention of people still in a position to do something about it.”

Mr. Johnston, 56, has also put up $1 million for research into Australia’s water crisis.

– Herald-Sun, 24 April 2006

I wonder if he has made the connection between Australia’s INCREASING population and the ongoing drought and water shortage crisis. All he has to do is look at China, which has a huge population and is undergoing an environmental catastrophe. Given the environmental problems such as global warming and ever-scarcer resources that face humanity in the coming decades, urging people to have more children is irresponsible in the extreme. The main reason why businessmen like him want an increased birth and immigration rate is so that they can make more money from more people.

Australia’s birthrate has in fact been increasing, in part no thanks to the “baby bonus” payments introduced by John Howard’s Federal government in 2004, and which subsequent governments refuse to abolish. Apart from this, there are also generous family government benefits for each child.

As far as I am concerned, the fewer people the better. As noted above, I sincerely hope that some scientist genetically-engineers a contagious virus that would sterilize most of humanity! Little else seems to be effective.

Links

There are a lot of people concerned with the overpopulation issue; unfortunately few get into positions of influence. Below are some websites and articles. I also keep a blog, Populate and perish, where I comment on many more articles.

Articles

Websites

The Year of 7 Billion specials:

Updated: 29/12/2015

Favorite (fictional) villains

Here are listed some of my favorite fictional villains, in alphabetical order. I have long had a fascination with the “dark side” and these guys epitomize it for me!

I find the fictional villains fascinating because they represent what I call “majestic evil” – they have vast supernatural powers, rule worlds or galaxies and they just look cool in all those black robes and armor! Evil in the real world – “mundane evil,” that perpetuated by humans – does not interest me for the most part; it is banal and unpleasant. (For example, I despise people – mainly thuggish young males – who assault elderly people or who are cruel to animals; I think they should be executed.)

In the real world I am powerless and insignificant; occasionally I have been harrassed by other humans (mainly the aforementioned aggressive young males) and am unable to retaliate in any way. This leads to immense frustration and suppressed rage, so that is one obvious reason why I find my villains appealing: they would not tolerate such treatment and would reduce the offending humans to their component atoms in an instant! They are everything I am not: awe- and fear-inspiring, and powerful beyond measure – enough to destroy worlds – and they do whatever they want.

I don’t necessarily like everything about my villains. There is no reason why a bad guy can’t have morals and a code of honor, and some of the villains are a bit lacking in that respect (e.g. Sauron). (Good personal hygiene and a stylish dress sense are also preferable!)

My villains are all male. I do like my villains to be good-looking and male! :-) (Mere mortal male humans tend to pale a bit in comparison. Sorry!) Interestingly, some have quite a few female fans; my theory is that:

  1. they are more masculine than mere mortal human males in modern society and
  2. they are not likely to go around raping women (unlike many human males) – i.e. a woman would be safe with a non-human male. Incidentally, this very lengthy thread at MetaFilter is on the topic of why women can feel threatened by strange men.

Another feature is that they all wear a mask that adds to their aura of mystery and menace!

And another interesting (but probably irrelevent) note is that many of the villains’ names begin with “S”! Just like my first name!

Most of my favorite villains end up dead, alas. They should have consulted the Evil Overlord list for a list of what mistakes to avoid!

Dark Lord fashion tips

Saren Arterius

Saren is a relatively new alien villain from a 2007 computer game called Mass Effect. I happened across his profile while wandering around on Wikipedia for something else in August 2007. Saren is annoyed at humanity for various reasons (his brother was killed by humans in the First Contact War) and doesn’t think much of the species (he isn’t the only one! :-)). I like this forum user’s opinion (spelling mistakes theirs):

I also think part of it has to do with me wanting to see a villan win in these kinds of stories. I am just about sick of seeing the human race win all of these space battles and wars. However cruel that may seem it is true, for example I wanted badly for the humans to fall in halo and lose everything. I want Saren to kick everyones butt and take names with a smile.

Appeal factors: fearsome warrior, looks cool.

Sauron

The main adversary in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, who wants his Ring back very badly. He is a spirit called a Maia and can assume various forms. In the opening battle scene of The Fellowship of the Ring he has the form of a tall fearsome warrior in cool-looking spiky armor; but after that he only appears as a fiery Eye. He needs the Ring to be able to take physical form, and after the destruction of the Ring he sort of evaporated. Presumably he is sulking somewhere.

He is a Dark Lord with awesome powers. What more do you need? He has disappointingly little “screen time” in either the books or the movies, so perhaps he could get his own novel or movie, one day!

Even Sauron answered to a higher power: Morgoth/Melkor, who was bigger and badder than him (Sauron was his “Chief Lieutenant”). Morgoth doesn’t feature in LOTR, though.

Appeal factors: awesome powers, Dark Lord.

Sith Lords

The Sith Lords are the main opponents in the Star Wars movies and books; they manipulate the dark side of the Force, are generally bad and don’t apologize for it! Their adversaries, the Jedi, can be irritatingly self-righteous.

Darth Vader was the original Sith Lord and still holds a strong appeal, though he seems a little old-fashioned now in appearance – his 1970s-era armor really needs a redesign, but because of the order in which the movies were filmed, that can’t be done. He also converts back to the light side of the Force before he dies. Wuss!

In the early years of the original trilogy – I saw the first Star Wars (Episode 4) in 1978 when I was 7 years old – I found him quite scary! Unfortunately this has been much diluted by subsequent Expanded Universe fiction, fan fiction and innumerable parodies. I do miss the mysterious, menacing villain he initially presented as.

Appeal factors: awesome powers, Dark Lords, look cool.

Sutekh

I watched the Dr. Who episode Pyramids of Mars when it originally screened in Australia in the mid-1970s (1976?) and was captivated by Sutekh, particularly his mask! I have a recollection of trying to draw it. He was my first villainous infatuation, so I feel a particular fondness for him! I saw the two-part episode again in 2004 and it still was excellent. He was one of the alien Osirian race who was imprisoned in an Egyptian pyramid by others of his race (led by his brother Horus) after he became psychotic and wished to destroy everything. A signal from a pyramid of Mars kept him in stasis.

Appeal factors: Ancient Egyptian mythology, awesome powers, cool mask.

Updated: 17/1/2018

Updated: 20/6/2026