kenneal - lagger wrote:The real problem is that we are controlled in various ways by a group of psychopaths, as Dr Tim Jackson called them at the recent CUSP meeting in Central Hall Westminster, (I had called them mentally ill Kleptocrats in the question he was answering), who desire more and more riches the more they have. We have to get rid of the psychopaths and then we might have a chance of living within a natural ecosystem.
The invention of farming and a static population has allowed the psychopaths to take over the population and their greed has enslaved mankind ever since.
Yes and no. Yes, sedentism and farming allowed certain very unhelpful things to take hold, including serious imbalances of wealth and power. In most human societies that have existed since the neolithic revolution, a small number of people had too much power and abused it to become too wealthy, and did not rule in the interests of the people. We should note at this point that the only government of a major nation that has successfully implemented a population control policy is the Communist Party of China.
But we cannot blame the kleptocrats for the fact that the discussion about overpopulation which was so public and obvious in the 60s and 70s has all but disappeared since the 90s and now anybody who tries to point out that our biggest problem is overpopulation is likely to be accused of racism, misogyny or misanthropy. Why did this topic become taboo? Who silenced it?
Well, the kleptocracy was one factor, because their economist lackeys promote the idea that a growing population is the only way to keep the economy growing,
but you can't blame the kleptocracy for the fact that people like Biff Vernon regurgitate their growth-propaganda in the name of humanitarianism
What are the other factors? The religious right, especially the protestant anti-abortion US, the anti-contraception Catholics, and many muslim societies, have also contributed.
One of the two worst offending groups have been feminists, who made a sustained and successful effort to re-cast the overpopulation problem according to their "patriarchy" narrative. For them, both the absence of availability of contraception AND population control measures equate to men denying women the freedom of control over their own bodies. So every time anybody tries to talk about overpopulation, the feminists insist that the real issue is "women's reproductive health". Women supposedly have the right to have as many babies as they like, and anything else is male oppression.
The other of the worst offending groups is the intellectual left, the perfect example of which is Biff Vernon. For this group, any mention of overpopulation is met by claims that the problem is really overconsumption in the west (as if the world's poor wouldn't "overconsume" if anybody gave them half a chance) and the legacy of imperialism (as if those who were conquered wouldn't have done the same had they been in a position to do so), and the response should be humanitarian and we just have to hope that overpopulation sorts itself out without anybody having to do anything nasty.
The kleptocracy, for all its evil, is not responsible for the fact that feminism, the religious right and the intellectual left have all got together in an alliance straight from hell to conspire to silence anybody who points out that the real problem is, and always has been, overpopulation and our unwillingness as a species to do anything about it. Apart from the Communist Party of China, who are, of course, roundly condemned for their human rights abuses, especially their treatment of women who had an illegal second child and the fact that they rather like the death penalty.
